ANEPC President Tells MPs Civil Protection Budget Must Climb From €134.5M Back to €191M Before Summer — Moura Warns of 'Extremely Difficult' Fire Season and Slams PS Reform That Killed District Operations
ANEPC chief José Manuel Moura told MPs on 25 April that the agency's €134.5M 2026 budget must be reinforced back to last year's €191M, warned of an 'extremely difficult' fire campaign, and slammed the PS-era scrapping of the district commands.
The president of Portugal's National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority, José Manuel Moura, told the parliamentary Comissão de Inquérito aos Incêndios Rurais on Friday, 25 April 2026, that the agency's current operating budget will not survive contact with the Iberian summer. ANEPC was given €134.5 million for 2026 — €56.5 million below the €191 million it received in 2025 — and Moura made it plain that a reinforcement back toward last year's number is, in his words, "inevitável".
Where the money goes
The numbers Moura laid before MPs explain why the cut bites quickly. Of the €191 million ANEPC spent in 2025, €143 million flowed directly to the bombeiros corporations — paying for the permanent intervention teams (the agency reimburses 50% of their cost), for the operational quotas calculated on each association's incident load and protected forest area, and for extraordinary expenses generated by the fire campaign itself. A further €21.8 million had to be paid late in 2025 just to cover firefighter meals during prolonged deployments — an item that does not feature in any peace-time budget projection.
The contingency reserve
Moura highlighted a €53 million budgetary reserve built into the 2026 envelope that, in his framing, "will have to be recovered" regardless of how the season unfolds — meaning he expects to be back asking parliament and the Ministry of Finance for top-ups before September. He also warned the committee, in deliberately stark terms, that operational planning is being done on the assumption of an "extremely difficult" 2026 fire campaign, citing the dry winter, accumulated fuel load and meteorological forecasts that already point to above-average risk for the interior north and centre.
The CDO row
The most pointed exchange of Moura's appearance was political. The previous PS-led government dismantled the Comandos Distritais de Operações de Socorro (CDOS), the district-level command tier that had coordinated bombeiros, GNR, INEM and forestry assets at the operational coalface. Moura did not mince words: he called the reform incoherent, arguing that ANEPC has been left running a national-to-local chain that lacks the intermediate operational layer field commanders actually use. He stopped short of calling for a full restoration of the district commands but signalled that the post-2024 architecture is, in operational practice, broken.
Where it goes from here
The Comissão de Inquérito will continue hearing testimony into May and is expected to deliver its report before the start of the high-risk fire period on 1 July. Three threads are converging on Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento's desk:
- A formal ANEPC request to bring 2026 funding back toward €191 million, with the €53 million reserve preserved as genuine contingency rather than backfill;
- Pressure from bombeiros associations — the Liga dos Bombeiros Portugueses has been vocal — for clarity on per-incident reimbursement formulas and on whether 2025-style meal supplements will be funded again;
- A separate technical review of the post-CDOS command structure, which is likely to produce recommendations the government will not be able to ignore once ignited terrain forces the issue.
Moura's central message to MPs landed cleanly: Portugal can debate the architecture all summer, but the fires will not wait. The agency walking into the campaign without the money, the people and the chain of command it had last year is the agency MPs will be questioning when the after-action reports start landing in October.
