Portugal’s president on Tuesday called for timely control of the use of European funds and considered it essential for their proper use to have political stability until the end of the legislature.
At the close of a conference on European funds at Culturgest in Lisbon, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa took as his task to ensure that no mishaps along the way until 2023, that is, no political or institutional crisis jeopardises this opportunity, decisively affecting its use.
According to him, economic and social reconstruction will require political stability, and therefore cannot be affected, not to say undermined, by any crisis that may arise in its courses, such as a rejected budget, early elections or vicissitudes of governance or institutional relationship.
De Sousa said that this economic and social reconstruction will have as relevant instruments the national reconstruction and resilience plan until 2026 and the European funds until 2027, but also the state budgets as a whole in that period.
“All European funds must be effectively and efficiently harnessed, which means well managed, managed with transparency, managed with evident and swift accountability of those who violate the Constitution, the law, European law or the requirements of the duty of good administration, and not less than all these parameters the ethics and integrity that are the opposite of mismanagement, fraud and corruption,” he said.
“In a word: in the end, all those involved in deciding and executing funds will have to be accountable,” he added.
In his speech at the conference, promoted by the Courts of Auditors of Portugal and the European Union, with his support, De Sousa made ten calls for attention regarding European funds at a time he described as a transition that marks the path towards the end of the pandemic and the urgency of economic and social reconstruction.
As for the control of the use of funds, according to him, it is important that whoever controls or is going to control again, acts in time, without harming the intervention of other controls, but rather joining them together.
Addressing the Court of Auditors directly, De Sousa asked it not to hesitate in doing what it has to do, to combine efforts with other controls and the entities that exercise them, to intervene on time, to always set an example, whether this pleases or displeases anyone.
“This is what the Portuguese people are asking of you. It is what I ask of you as president knowing in advance that you will meet such high expectations,” he said.
