Chega has agreed with the PSD to send the bill to the committee without a vote.

The agreement was announced on 11 June by the president of Chega, André Ventura, who said that the Social Democratic parliamentary group had accepted six of the party's seven demands, excluding one related to receiving support from immigrants.

Bill approved

The bill was approved by the Council of Ministers on 29 May, and, given the current parliamentary composition, the Government led by Luís Montenegro is obliged to negotiate with the PS or Chega for the bill to be approved in the Assembly of the Republic.

Aggregating supporting programs

According to the original proposal, the PSU will aggregate 13 existing support programs: the Social Insertion Income (RSI), six social parental allowances (initial parental allowance, for clinical risk during pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, specific risks, adoption, and the need to travel to a hospital unit located outside the pregnant woman's island of residence), the old-age social pension, the social pension of the special protection regime for disability, the extraordinary solidarity supplement, the widow's pension, the orphan's pension, and the social unemployment benefit.

Conditioning of the allocation

One of the main measures is conditioning the allocation of the PSU on the availability of the applicant or members of their household of working age who are not working, except in exceptional situations provided for by law, to perform "social solidarity activities" for up to 15 hours per week.

The bill, which has been criticised by several associations for potentially increasing stigma and reinforcing the exclusion of poor and vulnerable people, will be discussed in detail within a maximum of 10 days at the government's request.

Urgency of the debate

In the request, the executive justified the urgency of the debate with "the commitments made" under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), stressing that "the non-implementation of this reform implies the non-disbursement of approximately €620 million by the European Commission".

The Government's bill will be discussed simultaneously with bills from JPP, BE, and Livre, as well as resolutions (recommendations) from Livre and Chega on the same topic.