Decree-Law 177/2026, published on Friday, is the seventeenth amendment to the Public Contracts Code. It lifts four thresholds at once, the largest of them from 150,000 to a million euros.

A town hall that wants a school roof rebuilt will soon be able to pick a firm, agree a price and sign, with no competition at any point, as long as the job comes in under 150,000 euros. The current cut-off is 30,000. That is five times more room. The rule appeared in the official gazette on Friday. Decree-Law 177/2026 is the seventeenth amendment to the Public Contracts Code since 2008, and it applies from 1 October, leaving buyers just under four weeks…

Continue reading

That is the 2027 cost of measures already approved. Pensions account for €1.99bn, public-sector pay for more than €1bn, and debt interest for €776m more than this year.

Every year, by 31 August, the Portuguese government hands parliament a document with a name nobody would say out loud: the Framework of Invariant Policies. It does something genuinely useful. It shows MPs what the decisions already taken will cost next year, before a single new measure is debated. For 2027 the bill is €4.783 billion. Spending accounts for €5.042 billion; on the revenue side a net saving of €259 million softens the total. Pensions are the…

Continue reading

Chega filed its censure motion on Wednesday and party leaders decide on Thursday whether the debate lands on 10 or 17 September. It is the 37th since 1976, and the arithmetic explains the pattern.

Chega filed its censure motion against the government on Wednesday. André Ventura announced it at the party's Lisbon headquarters, flanked by MPs Cristina Rodrigues, Pedro Frazão and Nuno Gabriel. Parliament's president, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, passed the scheduling to the conference of parliamentary leaders, which decides on Thursday whether the debate happens on 10 or 17 September. Before the dates, the arithmetic. That is usually where these stories…

Continue reading

The electoral commission counted 383,117 votes for and 160,904 against on a 62.6% turnout. The text moves the prime minister's powers to the president, cuts parliament from 102 seats to 65 and sets the legal frame for December's elections.

Guinea-Bissau's National Electoral Commission released provisional results on Tuesday for Sunday's referendum, and the yes side took 70%. That is 383,117 ballots for the new constitution against 160,904 opposed. Of 914,428 registered voters, 572,714 turned out, a participation rate of 62.6%. The regional breakdown says more than the headline percentage does. Gabú gave the yes 90%, Bafatá 85%, Biombo and Quinara 79%, Cacheu and Tombali 70%, Oio 60% and…

Continue reading

Law 34/2026 changes 32 articles of the Code of Criminal Procedure from 1 September. Prosecutors get a 20-witness ceiling, trials must be listed within two months, and stalling can now cost up to 10,200 euros.

Anyone with a criminal hearing listed this week is walking into a different rulebook from the one that applied on Friday. Law 34/2026 came into force today, rewriting 32 articles of the Code of Criminal Procedure, adding three more, and reaching into the Penal Code and the court-fees regulation as well. Parliament passed it on 12 June and the President signed it on 17 July, but nothing changed until 1 September.

Continue reading

José Manuel Pureza closed his party's autumn forum with two ideas: Caixa Geral de Depósitos cutting its spread to absorb the ECB's 2026 rate rises, and doubling the property surcharge that funds Social Security.

Portugal's Left Bloc wrapped up its autumn forum in Setúbal with two proposals aimed at the same group of people: anyone paying a mortgage, and anyone relying on Social Security. The first has a name, the Caixa Brake. National coordinator José Manuel Pureza proposed that Caixa Geral de Depósitos spend twelve months absorbing the European Central Bank's 2026 rate rises rather than passing them through to payments on a borrower's own permanent home. The…

Continue reading

André Ventura set 1 September as the deadline. If the interior minister is still in post, Chega says it files the motion that day.

Chega has finally put a date on it. If Luís Neves is still interior minister on Tuesday 1 September, the party says it will file a censure motion against Luís Montenegro's government that same day. André Ventura made the announcement on Friday, and it is the first time in this standoff that Chega has named a deadline rather than issued a warning. Ventura was careful to draw a line between the two things he is asking for. He says he does not want a…

Continue reading

A draft decree-law reshaping the conservador and registry-officer careers has cleared public consultation and now goes to the Council of Ministers. The largest monthly rise is 288.49 euros, and it lands in the middle of the scale rather than at the top.

If you work behind the counter at a Portuguese conservatória, your pay scale is about to be redrawn. The draft decree-law revising the careers of conservador de registos and oficial de registos appeared on 3 August in separata 24/2026 of the Boletim do Trabalho e Emprego, has finished its twenty days of public consultation, and is now waiting on the Council of Ministers. The headline figure is 288.49 euros a month. That is the biggest rise produced by…

Continue reading

The President promulgated a government decree on 24 August giving domestic effect to EU regulations on carriage of passengers and baggage by rail, road and sea, explicitly covering hand luggage, pets and bicycles.

Taking a bike on the train, travelling with the cat in a carrier, checking a bag onto a scheduled ferry — all of this has been regulated at EU level for years. What Portugal was missing is the dull, decisive part: who checks, who takes the complaint, who issues the fine. That gap is what the government has just closed. On 24 August, the President promulgated the decree giving domestic legal effect to the obligations arising from several European…

Continue reading

Portugal's Council of Ministers approved the decree creating the Figueira da Foz Julgado de Paz on 20 August, covering civil disputes up to €15,000. The building was renovated months ago, but the court cannot open until the decree is promulgated, published and followed by a ministerial order fixing the date.

On Praceta Dr. Nogueira de Carvalho, in the parish of São Julião, there is a three-storey building with a hearing room, an office for the justice of the peace, a witness room and a space set aside for pre-mediation. The refurbishment cost around €72,000 and finished months ago. The one thing missing is a date for opening the door. The government's part arrived on 20 August. Meeting at the Prime Minister's official residence, the Council of Ministers…

Continue reading

At a formal session in Vila Nova de Cerveira, António José Seguro named depopulation, ageing and distance from decision-making centres as problems the central state has to answer with investment.

Vila Nova de Cerveira sits on the Minho, in Portugal's far north-west, with a castle built under King Dinis and a contemporary art biennial now in its 24th edition. From there, on Sunday, President António José Seguro sent a message to the government. "I know the difficulties common to so many territories of the interior and the border. Depopulation, ageing, distance from the big decision-making centres," he told the biennial's formal session. "These are…

Continue reading

Law 35/2026 sets criminal-policy priorities through 2028. It orders the Attorney General to set up a special team to investigate forest arson, staffed by the judicial police, the GNR and the forestry institute, opens forest clearing to prison work, and provides for stop-and-search in areas designated as having socially damaging crime.

In ten days Portugal acquires an investigation team that exists for one crime only, and that crime is setting fire to a forest. It is article 22 of Law 35/2026, the statute fixing criminal-policy priorities for 2026 to 2028, which under its article 29 comes into force on 1 September. The team is constituted by the Attorney General, after hearing the heads of the bodies involved, and brings together the Polícia Judiciária, the GNR and the forestry and…

Continue reading

The President signed the revision of Portugal's TVDE law on 18 August. Platforms must ensure drivers speak Portuguese, passengers can filter for it in the app, taxis are allowed onto the platforms, and in-car video recording is permitted only with both parties' consent.

The biggest rewrite of Portugal's ride-hailing rules since the regime was created has cleared its final hurdle. On 18 August, President António José Seguro signed the parliamentary decree amending Law 45/2018, the law governing paid individual passenger transport in unmarked vehicles booked through an app. It went through on the same day as the face-covering ban, and attracted a fraction of the attention.

Continue reading

MTVA suspended bulletins on M1 and Kossuth radio on 7 July, replacing them with a black screen and an apology. They return today, on Hungary's national holiday, with a new editorial team.

On 7 July, anyone who turned on M1 or Kossuth radio found a black screen and an apology for years of political distortion. It was not a fault. It was MTVA, Hungary's public broadcaster, taking its own news bulletins off air on the new government's instruction. Forty-four days later, they come back today. The date was not picked at random. 20 August is a national holiday in Hungary, St Stephen's Day, and the biggest television day in the Hungarian…

Continue reading

The President signed the decree on 18 August. It bars clothing worn to hide the face in public, bars anyone from forcing a person to cover it, and carves out health, work, weather, aircraft, embassies and places of worship. Deliberate breaches run to 3,000 euros.

It is done. On 18 August the President of the Republic signed into law the parliamentary decree that, by its formal name, sets the security and prevention rules on identifying citizens in public spaces. Nobody calls it that. Everybody calls it the burqa law. The banning part is short. It is now prohibited to wear, in public spaces, clothing intended to hide the face or make it hard to see. It covers streets, places open to the public, public service…

Continue reading

The working group led by economist Jorge Bravo presented its final report on Tuesday, arguing the widely announced surplus disappears once the civil service pension fund is added in. The combined 2025 balance turns into a €1.94 billion deficit. The labour ministry ruled out reform the same afternoon.

The government commissioned the study. The government then spent the afternoon of its publication explaining that it will not do what it recommends. The final report of the working group on social security reform, chaired by the economist Jorge Bravo, was presented at the NOVA IMS auditorium in Lisbon on Tuesday. Within hours the labour ministry had restated that there will be no structural reform of the system in this parliament. Back in July we wrote…

Continue reading

Tuesday's decree keeps the 100% subsidy for the 220,000 elderly people on the solidarity supplement, but pegs it to the reference price of the homogeneous group. Anything above that line now comes out of the patient's pocket.

The word the government keeps using in the decree is free, and it is still accurate. What has changed is where the bill stops. Since 2024, people receiving the complemento solidário para idosos — Portugal's top-up for pensioners on very low incomes — have collected prescription medicines without paying anything. Before that the additional subsidy covered half. The decree published on Tuesday keeps the figure at 100%, but changes what the 100% is…

Continue reading

Decree-Law 167/2026 came into force on Tuesday. Cultural donations now count at 140% against corporate tax, two new cultural titles are created, and every application will eventually run through a national platform that has not been built yet.

The rewrite of Portugal's cultural patronage regime took effect on Tuesday, and the change that matters most to people working in culture is not the tax rate. It is the door. Decree-Law 167/2026 creates a cultural initiative title that an individual can apply for, not only an institution. A theatre director, a photographer or a video game author registered with the tax authority, keeping organised accounts and trading under the listed artistic activity…

Continue reading

Law 49/2026 was published on Monday. It does not create the process for selling a property stuck in an unshared inheritance — it authorises the government to create one, and starts the clock.

Law 49/2026 was published in Portugal's official gazette on Monday. It is the statute reported everywhere as the one that unblocks the sale of houses stranded in inheritances nobody has divided. If you own a share of one and were planning to act this week, the useful thing to know is that nothing has changed. What was published is an enabling law. It does not create the special sale process. It authorises the government to create it, and gives it 180 days…

Continue reading

At the PSD's summer rally in the Algarve, the prime minister tied both measures to budget headroom. He also announced the rail pass extension and claimed 28,300 homes delivered under the recovery plan.

Luís Montenegro opened his party's political season at the Festa do Pontal in Quarteira with a 48-minute speech and two promises carrying neither a figure nor a date. If there is budget headroom, he said, the government will continue "the policy of cutting income tax and raising the lowest pensions". The conditional is the load-bearing part of that sentence. "We have already cut income tax four times," the prime minister said, putting roughly €2bn back in…

Continue reading

The President signed the decree on 13 August, amending both the 2025 pregnancy and childbirth rights law and the 2014 patient rights law. Informed consent, clinical audits and a national council go in. The phrase everyone argued about goes out.

Between a vote in parliament and a rule that actually applies on a delivery ward there is always a step nobody reports. That step happened on Thursday. The President signed the decree amending Law 33/2025 on rights in pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period, and Law 15/2014, which consolidates the rights and duties of health service users. It now goes to the official gazette for publication.

Continue reading

It is the first use of the 2025 Economic Reciprocity Law. Opening the process imposes nothing: it obliges Brazil's foreign ministry to notify Washington and request consultations, and the law only allows a response proportionate to the harm.

Brazil's government announced on 13 August that it has opened a formal analysis of the measures the United States applied to Brazilian exports under Section 301 of American trade law. It is the first time Brasília has reached for the Economic Reciprocity Law since that law came into existence. Two things worth keeping apart, because headlines tend to fuse them. Opening the process is not retaliation. It starts a procedure with defined stages, and the…

Continue reading

The Assembleia da República's biographical register is free and voluntary to complete and is not a means of meeting any declaratory obligation, unlike the register of interests. The distinction explains why MPs' stated qualifications have been contested more than once.

If you want to know what a Portuguese MP studied, where they worked and what offices they have held, there is somewhere to look. The parliament's website publishes a biographical register for each of the 230 members: name, parentage, birthplace, profession, public, political and private posts, honours, publications. All of it open, no login required. What is not there is any assurance that it is accurate. Parliament says so itself, on the register's own…

Continue reading

Law 45/2026 was published on 11 August and creates three grades: assistant, adviser and senior adviser. It takes effect with the next state budget, and there are only around 150 dentists in the public sector today.

Until this week, a dentist working in a Portuguese health centre had no grade, no route to promotion and nothing to apply for. Most of them are freelancers invoicing month to month. Law 45/2026, published in the official gazette on 11 August, creates a dedicated dental career inside the national health service for the first time. Parliament passed it unanimously in July. The President signed it in early August.

Continue reading

The text filed with the Assembly of the Republic asks for licences to expire automatically at 75. Today the law works the other way round, through renewal deadlines and individual fitness assessments.

The question has been going round neighbourhood groups and comment threads since the start of the month, and the legal answer catches most people out. Portugal has no maximum age for driving a car. What it now has is a petition asking for one. Filed with the Assembly of the Republic and created on 1 April, it proposes that a driving licence should expire automatically at 75. The petitioner, Nélson Manuel de Oliveira Ferreira, argues that cognitive, visual…

Continue reading

Portugal's governing party runs its 22nd summer university from 24 to 30 August, with Paulo Portas taking the Saturday morning slot and Luís Montenegro closing the week.

Every August since 2003, a hill town of barely three thousand people in the Alto Alentejo hosts a sizeable chunk of the Portuguese centre-right for a week. Castelo de Vide does it again from 24 to 30 August, for the 22nd edition of the PSD's summer university. The format has not changed much. Around a hundred selected young people from across the country get a week of classes, dinner-conferences, workshops and a mock parliamentary session. It is run…

Continue reading

The prime minister said Portugal is more competitive than its partners, while conceding the difficulties faced by anyone relying on the health service, raising school-age children or filling a fuel tank.

Luís Montenegro spent Monday morning in Fafe, in the Braga district, formally opening the town's new Loja do Cidadão. The one-stop public services centre had already been serving the public since 3 August, in the old Royal Center building, gathering government departments and partner bodies behind a single set of counters. The visit was listed on the prime minister's official agenda for the day.

Continue reading

Law 44/2026, published on Monday, sets out the rights of students with specific educational needs in higher education, brings back expert-committee assessment for applicants without a multi-purpose disability certificate, and amends the 2006 accessibility rules.

Apply to a Portuguese university with a disability this year and you need a multi-purpose medical incapacity certificate to prove it. Applicants who could not get the document in time were shut out of the priority quota, even where the disability was documented some other way. The law published on Monday undoes that. Law 44/2026 appeared in the official gazette on 10 August, approving the legal framework for students with specific educational needs in…

Continue reading

Law 43/2026, published in the official gazette on Monday, sets up transition homes for up to ten residents and home-support options for patients who are medically discharged but have nowhere to go. It only takes financial effect with the 2027 state budget.

Some hospital beds in Portugal are occupied by people who are no longer ill. Their discharge was signed weeks ago, sometimes far longer, and they stay put because there is no adapted housing, no family able to take them, and no place anywhere else. The term for it is social admission, and as of Monday it has a law attached to its name. The legal framework for the Voltar a Casa programme was published in the official gazette on 10 August as Law 43/2026. It…

Continue reading

Mohammed bin Salman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement on 7 August, extending to Turkey the mutual defence commitment Riyadh and Islamabad struck in September 2025.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a joint defence agreement in Mecca on 7 August, with Mohammed bin Salman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Shehbaz Sharif putting their names to it. The central clause leaves little room for interpretation: an armed attack on any one of the three is to be treated as an attack on all three. This did not come out of nowhere. Riyadh and Islamabad had already agreed an equivalent bilateral commitment in September 2025, and…

Continue reading