Brussels Opens an Infringement Case Over Salary-Scale Discrimination Against Fixed-Term Public-Sector Workers — Portugal Has Two Months to Realign the Lei Geral do Trabalho em Funções Públicas With Directive 1999/70/EC

The European Commission's April 2026 infringement package, published in Brussels on Wednesday, opened a fresh formal-notice procedure against Portugal — case INFR(2026)4001 — over the way the Lei Geral do Trabalho em Funções Públicas treats fixed-term workers in the State sector. The Commission's complaint is narrow but pointed: when a contratado a termo and a permanent civil servant are doing the same job, are evaluated on the same SIADAP grid, and earn the same performance score, only the permanent worker is allowed to climb the salary scale. The fixed-term worker stays where they were hired.

That, Brussels argues, is direct discrimination under the framework agreement annexed to Council Directive 1999/70/EC — the EU's foundational fixed-term-work directive, in force since 1999, which Portugal has had a quarter of a century to implement correctly. Lisbon now has two months to respond and either explain why the Portuguese statute is compatible with the directive, or amend the law. If the response does not satisfy the Commission, the next steps in the procedure are a reasoned opinion and, eventually, referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union — the same path that produced this week's separate renewable-energy referral.

What Article 156 of the LGTFP Actually Does

The mechanism in dispute sits inside the Lei Geral do Trabalho em Funções Públicas. Permanent civil servants — the trabalhadores com vínculo de emprego público por tempo indeterminado — accumulate points under the SIADAP performance-evaluation system, and once those points reach defined thresholds, they progress through the grades within their career table (técnico superior, assistente técnico, assistente operacional). The progression carries an automatic salary increment.

Fixed-term workers — typically hired for replacement of absent staff, time-limited projects, or seasonal peaks — are evaluated under the same SIADAP machinery and can earn the same performance scores, but the LGTFP does not let them convert those points into salary progression. The justification, when ministries have explained it, has been that progression is a feature of the carreira, and the contratados a termo are not, by definition, on a career path. The Commission's reading is that this is precisely the form of unequal treatment the 1999 framework agreement was written to forbid.

The 2026 Infringement Package — Two Cases for Lisbon

The fixed-term case did not arrive alone. The same Wednesday package included a second formal notice on Portugal — INFR(2026)2045 — over failure to deliver the network-wide road-safety assessments mandated by the amended Road Infrastructure Safety Management Directive (2008/96/EC, as amended by 2019/1936). The reporting deadline for those TEN-T assessments expired on 31 October 2025. Portugal has the same two-month response window on that file.

Combined with the renewables-directive referral and the parallel reasoned opinion on electricity-market design rules already announced in the same package, the EU executive has placed Portugal in four active enforcement files in a single week. That is unusually heavy traffic, and it lands in the middle of a labour-policy debate the Montenegro government would rather frame around its own Trabalho XXI proposal — the package the CGTP plans to strike against on 2 June.

How Many Workers Are Affected

Direção-Geral da Administração e do Emprego Público data show roughly 752,000 people working in Portuguese central, regional and local administration. The fixed-term cohort inside that total has hovered around 50,000 to 60,000 in recent years, concentrated heavily in education (where colocação a termo is the gateway most teachers walk through before they ever land a quadro slot) and in the SNS, where temporary contracts have multiplied as ARS units patch staffing gaps. CCP-Sintap, FESAP and Frente Comum have all flagged the salary-scale exclusion in successive negotiations with successive governments without obtaining a fix.

One in four Portuguese women working in the labour market overall sits in some form of precarious arrangement — fixed-term, very short-term, or service contract. The public-sector slice is smaller than the national average, but politically heavier, because it concerns workers the State itself employs.

The Judicial Backdrop

The Court of Justice has already ruled extensively on Directive 1999/70/EC, including in earlier Spanish and Italian cases that produced essentially the doctrine the Commission is now applying to Portugal: where the work, the responsibilities and the evaluation criteria are equivalent, differential salary progression cannot be justified by the contractual form alone. Portuguese administrative tribunals have, in turn, been ordering State employers to recognise SIADAP-derived progression for individual fixed-term workers since at least 2019, but on a case-by-case basis. The Commission's intervention turns those scattered rulings into a wholesale legislative-reform requirement.

What This Means for Expats

• Public-sector hiring still favours quadros. Foreign residents looking for work inside the Portuguese State should expect that hiring still happens overwhelmingly through fixed-term contracts before permanent slots open; what the Commission's case may change is the salary trajectory inside that fixed-term phase, not the path itself.
• Education and SNS jobs feel it most. The directive case touches the two sub-sectors where most foreign-language and foreign-trained professionals enter the State — substitute teachers and contracted nurses, doctors and technicians. If salary progression is unlocked, the gap between starting and renewed contracts narrows.
• Wages, not job security. The Commission's complaint is about pay progression, not about contract conversion. Portuguese law on when a fixed-term contract becomes permanent is a separate file. Foreign workers should not expect this case to shorten the path to a quadro slot.
• Two-month clock starts now. Portugal's reply window expires in late June 2026. Any LGTFP amendment would normally then need to clear Council of Ministers, Parliament and presidential promulgation before taking effect — a 2027 outcome at the earliest.
• Penalty risk is real but distant. Financial penalties only attach if a Court of Justice judgment is ignored — and the Court action is two procedural steps and several years away.

For the Trabalho XXI debate, the practical impact is that the Commission has handed unions a fresh argument: the existing labour code already discriminates against fixed-term staff on a point Brussels considers actionable, and a reform that further expands fixed-term contracts — as the latest government draft does — without fixing the discrimination first will land at a moment of maximum European scrutiny. For the government, the file complicates the calendar. For workers in the State machine, the salary slope they thought was closed has just been reopened by a letter from Brussels.