Bar chart of the fixed monthly risk bonus for Portugal's PSP and GNR: 100 euros in 2023, 300 in 2024, 350 in 2025 and 400 in 2026

Politics 19 September 2026

If you check passports for Portugal, the government is offering you €160 a month

The proposal tabled on 17 September gives €160 a month in 2026, backdated to July, and €230 in 2027, but only to the PSP and GNR border units. Six of the seven PSP unions at the table were willing to negotiate. Two organisations are still holding protests over the 2024 deal.

Read that the government has offered Portuguese police another €160 a month and you will want the next line. The supplement tabled on 17 September is not for the PSP or the GNR as a whole. It is for two units: the PSP’s national foreigners and borders unit, and the GNR’s coastal and border control unit.

The offer is €160 a month in 2026, backdated to July, rising to €230 in 2027. The interior ministry grounds it in how particular the job is: dedicated training, highly specialised technical knowledge and the constant application of Portuguese and European law, across document checks, fraud detection, database queries and judging whether someone meets the conditions to enter the country. The ministry’s argument is retention. Pay to keep the people you have already trained.

Who said yes, and who did not

Six of the seven PSP unions in the room were prepared to accept the proposal, as were most of the GNR associations. Two organisations stayed out: ASPP/PSP and APG/GNR.

One technical point is still open, and it is not small if the money is yours. The representatives want assurances that the new supplement will not cost officers the command or patrol supplements some of them already draw. Without that, €160 on paper is worth noticeably less in the bank. The government is due to send the detailed proposal to the unions and associations for a final answer.

The 2024 deal sitting underneath

This argument is happening inside a bigger and older one. In July 2024 the government and the representative bodies signed an agreement raising the risk supplement by €300 in stages through to 2026: €200 in 2024, then €50 in 2025 and €50 in 2026. The fixed component went from €100 to this year’s €400. That agreement covered roughly 45,000 PSP officers and GNR guards.

The difference in scale is why the room split. A supplement for two units is not an answer to a deal written for 45,000 people, and the two bodies that signed nothing this week are keeping their protests scheduled for late September and early October, on the grounds that the 2024 agreement has not been honoured.

What these units actually do

It helps to know the work being priced. In its first year of operation, the PSP’s border unit checked 52,421 foreign nationals and found 1,117 in an irregular situation, and since the summer the force has also been running border checks at coach and rail terminals rather than only at airports and ports.

It is a service that has grown quickly, staffed by a headcount that has not grown at the same pace. This week’s proposal acknowledges that much. Whether it settles anything else is a separate question, and that one already has dates in the protest calendar.

By Tomás Vasconcelos

Chart: Tugadaily · Data: Government of Portugal

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