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“I am very concerned,” said the Minister of Finance in statements to journalists in parliament, at the end of the votes on the specialty of the 2021 State Budget proposal (OE2021).
The Plenary of Parliament today confirmed the vote on the specialty of BE’s budget proposal, which cancels the transfer of 476 million euros from the Resolution Fund to the New Bank.
Even earlier, in the debate that preceded the vote, the Secretary of State for Finance, João Nuno Mendes, warned that the cancellation of the transfer causes “a situation of total legal insecurity” with risks to the solvency of the institution.
“It is a situation of total legal insecurity in which we have the parliament replacing what are the supervisory regulatory institutions,” said João Nuno Mendes during the debate.
The Secretary of State also affirmed that all the contracts involving Novo Banco “have to do with something very serious, which is Novo Banco’s solvency.”
“Failure to comply with the Contingent Capital Mechanism, which aims to restore Novo Banco’s capital and solvency levels, affects compliance with the ratios required by the European Central Bank and the Single European Supervisory Mechanism,” added the minister.
The story of an outlier vote
In a confusing vote that had to be repeated, after being convened and debated in plenary, PSD, PCP, PEV, Chega and the unregistered deputy Joacine Katar Moreira joined their votes to BE to make this change possible, despite the votes in against the PS, Liberal Initiative and unregistered deputy Cristina Rodrigues and abstention from CDS-PP and PAN.
The proposal came to be considered a failure in a first vote, since the PSD / Madeira deputies – who asked that the table be physically in the plenary – voted against, along with the PS, the Liberal Initiative and the unwritten deputy Cristina Rodrigues, that first time Chega opted for abstention together with PAN and CDS-PP.
In the following moments, the PSD / Madeira deputy Sara Madruga da Costa asked for “a moment” while speaking on the phone, which led the President of the Assembly of the Republic, Ferro Rodrigues, to recall that the said deputies “what they asked it was to come and vote differently from the rest of the parliamentary group ”.
“It is true, Mr. President, you are right, but now we have changed the vote. It will be in favor of the three deputies elected by Madeira ”, he announced.
In the repetition of the vote, with Ferro Rodrigues indicating “trapalhadas”, the proposal was approved, voting in favor of all the PSD deputies, as well as BE, PCP, PEV, non-registered deputies Joacine Katar Moreira and Chega, who also changed the voting direction in the brief minutes that separate the two votes.
By the way, Chega’s deputy, André Ventura, had three positions on the issue, since in the specialty in which he voted against, in this morning’s debate he announced abstention – which he complied with in the first vote – but, in change the position of the PSD. / Madeira, ended up voting alongside BE’s proposal.
Regarding the vote in the Budget and Finance Committee on Wednesday night, in addition to Chega, the PAN also changed the direction of the vote in the plenary call, since it had voted in favor and now abstained in plenary.
The morning of the last day of the State Budgets for 2021 was marked by confusion and tension over the Novo Banco, even leading to two requests for suspension of work by the Government and the PS.
The surprise of the last day of the voting in the specialty of the State Budgets for 2021 (OE2021) happened in the final stretch of Wednesday, when the BE proposal – the only one of the blockers that was finally approved – that annuls the transfer of 476 Millions of euros from the New Bank Resolution Fund were given the green light, with favorable votes from the PSD, BE, PCP and PAN, abstention from the CDS-PP and votes against the PS, Liberal Initiative and Basta.
PSD will make a modification if the audit confirms the amount owed to Novo Banco
The PSD pledged this Thursday to make an amending budget feasible in 2021 that allows paying the amount owed to Novo Banco, but only if the audit of the institution justifies it, Deputy Duarte Pacheco announced in parliament.
“Once the audit is completed, if the amount is owed, the Government can present an amendment to the budget and here is the commitment of the Social Democratic Party that votes because we have to honor our commitments,” said the PSD parliamentarian during the special debate on the State Budgets for 2021 (OE2021).
The deputy assured that this would happen only “in this case, and not simply issue a blank check” for the transfer of 476 million euros to Novo Banco.
In the same debate, the deputy of the party that proposes the proposal, Mariana Mortágua (BE), defended that “what is at stake is neither the contract with Lone Star, nor even the contract with the European Commission”, because “it is at the closing of the Novo Banco accounts that the injection is decided ”.
“Until then, Novo Banco has the duty to show that it is not abusing that same contract. The contracts can be ruinous but they are not a right of withdrawal for the State and taxpayers,” defended the parliamentary blocker, advocating for the knowledge of the audit. to the institution.
Mariana Mortágua said that “to approve the budget and to say that the audit is taken seriously is to lie to people about an issue in which they have only been deceived so far.”
For the PEV, a party that does not have a seat on the Budget and Finance Committee and therefore did not vote on the proposal in the specialty, José Luís Ferreira argued that the end of the “immorality” of public money to finance the bank “must begin with the New Bank “. “.
“Since the beginning of the financial crisis, the Portuguese have already paid more than 20,000 million euros trying to save the bank”, and on Novo Banco he considered that “what is born twisted late or never goes well”, defending the public control of the institution.
João Paulo Correia (PS) accused the PSD of not being “trustworthy” and said that Novo Banco “does not deal with taxpayers’ money” or “taxes”, but that the BE proposal prevents “the bank from solve the banking problem. “
“It tears the most important of the economic activity in the stability of the financial sector at the worst moment,” accused the vice president of the PS bench.
João Cotrim Figueiredo, from IL, said that BE “decided to block the PS”, also accusing Catarina Martins’ party of wanting to turn Novo Banco “into a horror movie.”
“Everyone inside and outside Portugal finds out that the Portuguese State is not really obliged to fulfill the contracts it signs, and that Parliament encourages it to do so,” denounced the Liberal deputy, warning of the decapitalization of the New Bank.
CDS-PP deputy Cecília Meireles said that her party originally criticized the Novo Banco sale contract and that “it was a way to advance the burden of the state.”
“If what is at stake now is a breach of contract, then when the Prime Minister said that he would not pay until there was an audit, in reality all the mechanisms that are talked about now had to be activated at that time, and for therefore I find it difficult for the government to use this argument now ”, explained the centrist parliamentarian.
André Silva, from the PAN, who ended up abstaining today after voting in favor of the BE proposal on the specialty on Wednesday, said that “any brake on the drain of public money to Novo Banco always had to be accompanied by the renegotiation of sales agreements “.
For Chega, André Ventura said that his party would not oppose the BE’s proposal, after having voted against the specialty on Friday, announcing an abstention, but ended up voting in favor in the final vote.
