Mariana Leitão questioned the Government leader during this afternoon's bi-weekly debate in the Assembly of the Republic about Chega's demands to approve the changes to the labour law that will be discussed and voted on this week. André Ventura wants the retirement age to be 65 or to coincide with when the worker completes 40 years of contributions.

Criticism of the Prime Minister

The leader of the liberals criticised the Prime Minister for, in the negotiation of the labour package in recent months with the social partners, having chosen to "hold more than 60 meetings with trade union centres captured by the parties, to then start negotiations with parties captured by the narratives of the trade union centres".

“What the Prime Minister did was to call himself ‘Luís, the concert-maker,’ only to later lament the inflexibility of social dialogue,” she said, after also criticising the Government’s focus on issues such as breastfeeding while the “country suffers from low birth rates.”

IL also stated that Luís Montenegro “handed over the future of the country’s youth” to vested interests and “involved labour reform in a completely toxic debate, which obviously harms it now and will harm it in the future.”

Government negotiations

After the criticism, Mariana Leitão concluded with a question about the Government’s negotiations with Chega: “Will you or will you not give in to Chega on lowering the retirement age as a counterpart to labour reform?”

In response, Montenegro said he disagreed with Leitão’s view on social dialogue, challenged IL to participate in the discussion of this proposal “without stigmas,” but did not directly answer the question, noting that there is no agreement between the parties at the moment.

"The best thing is for no one to rush to conclusions that may not be supported by what happens later. There are already enough of those, and there are many who have said everything and its opposite in public over the months about this process," he added.

After this response, Mariana Leitão asked again whether the Government would lower the retirement age to meet Chega's demand, to which Luís Montenegro replied briefly: "You know that we do not support this proposal."

Considering sustainability

In a later response, Montenegro also said he agreed with Mariana Leitão's view that lowering the retirement age without considering sustainability "was a mistake and burdened young people," pointing to the executive's measures aimed at younger people.

When the Prime Minister no longer had time to respond, Mariana Leitão also accused the Prime Minister of "celebrating the fact that Portugal is slowing down less than the rest of the European economies."

In this exchange of arguments, Luís Montenegro took the opportunity to respond to a previous intervention by the Secretary-General of the PS, José Luís Carneiro, accusing him of, in labour matters, “sounding like Paulo Raimundo”, leader of the PCP.

“At least Mr Deputy Paulo Raimundo is consistent; he always speaks up, and he defends his convictions. Deputy José Luís Carneiro and the Socialist Party, on the other hand, are always zigzagging, as is characteristic of their more recent political history,” he retorted.