Five Braga charities are up to 95% through their builds and could still lose the EU money
UDIPSS Braga has written to the President and the Government about €11.9 million of social investment, €6.1 million of it from the recovery plan, at risk because deadlines expire before the works finish.
The question sounds absurd until you look at the paperwork. There are building sites in Braga that are 95% complete and may lose the European money that has paid for them so far, because the spending deadline runs out before the builders do.
UDIPSS Braga, the district union of private social solidarity institutions, has sent an open letter to the President, the Prime Minister and several government ministers asking for an urgent political answer. Its survey of member organisations found five projects still under construction, worth close to €11.9 million, of which roughly €6.1 million comes from Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan.
These are not abstractions. They are nurseries, residential homes for older people, day centres for people with disabilities, supported living homes and home care services, serving 388 people directly. The works stand between 50% and 95% complete, and every institution in the survey flags the same risk if the deadlines are not extended.
Whose delay is it
UDIPSS argues that the overwhelming majority of the obstacles came from outside the institutions, and the list is long. Contractors failing badly enough to force contract termination and a full rerun of public procurement. Repeated delays from construction firms. Slow processing of administrative files. Applications left suspended for months awaiting legal decisions. Materials that did not arrive. Delays connecting to the electricity grid. Design errors. Unplanned archaeological work.
The organisation is sharpest on the absence of oversight of the builders. It describes licensed contractors who won tenders beyond their capacity, failed to deliver, and kept their licence intact without sanction, bidding normally on the next job. Then it turns the question back on the state: how can institutions be held to absolute deadlines when public bodies take months to issue opinions, approve variations and grant permits?
The second penalty
There is a tax blow on top. According to UDIPSS, a tax authority interpretation now requires these institutions to absorb additional VAT charges on precisely the social investments they are carrying out, forcing them to find money they do not have.
The most telling line in the letter is a different one. In several cases the recovery plan applications were only approved a few months before the execution deadline itself. The clock started late and nobody stopped it. The plan’s timetable and spending rules are published on the Recuperar Portugal portal, and the last big public investment decision we followed, the CP high-speed train tender, runs on the same tight calendar.
By Beatriz Mota
Photo: Carlos Luis M C da Cruz / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
