Carneiro Meets Montenegro at São Bento on Thursday 14 May Over Trabalho XXI — PS Reserves Position Until Cabinet Text Lands, Chega Signals Negotiating Window, UGT Logs 12 Amendments in Final Draft

The leader of the Partido Socialista, José Luís Carneiro, met Prime Minister Luís Montenegro at the Palácio de São Bento on Thursday 14 May at the precise moment the Conselho de Ministros was completing its formal approval of the Trabalho XXI labour-reform bill upstairs. The meeting — requested by the Prime Minister on Monday after the Concertação Social negotiations closed without an agreement — produced no on-the-record commitment from either leader, with Carneiro telling reporters afterwards that PS will read the Cabinet text in full before signalling whether it is prepared to negotiate parliamentary amendments.

Carneiro arrived at São Bento directly from the Palácio de Belém, where he had spent the late morning with President António José Seguro discussing the government's reform agenda. The Belém visit followed Seguro's 12 May devolution of the nationality-law decree to the Assembleia da República, a procedural reset that pulled PS back into a delicate balancing act between criticising the substance of the PSD-Chega-IL-CDS majority's legislative output and preserving room to negotiate on Trabalho XXI. Carneiro told the press scrum outside the presidential palace that PS intended "to put the country's interest above partisan interests" — language that left negotiating space without committing the bench.

The Cabinet draft Montenegro defended to Carneiro extends fixed-term contracts to a maximum of three years from the current two, allows contratos a termo incerto to run up to five years, and preserves the Banco de Horas framework with mild modifications. The Ministra do Trabalho, Maria do Rosário Ramalho, confirmed at a 15:30 briefing that the final text incorporates more than 50 amendments versus the July 2025 working draft, of which 12 — including changes to the outsourcing carve-out and the reintegração clauses — come from the UGT. The CGTP rejected the package outright, calling it a "retrocesso" and confirming that the 12.ª Greve Geral pré-aviso lodged with the Ministério do Trabalho earlier this week stands.

Chega's position is more accommodating than PS's. Party leader André Ventura confirmed on Wednesday that the bench is open to negotiating amendments in the parliamentary specialty phase, particularly on the duração dos contratos and on the supplementary-hours regime. That stance gives the government a parliamentary path to the bill's approval that does not require PS support, but Montenegro's team has been signalling that a broader cross-bench majority would carry more weight when the law reaches inevitable constitutional fiscalisation.

Carneiro's caveat — that PS "can only be available to negotiate after knowing the Government's proposal" — was directly addressed in the post-meeting communiqué from the Prime Minister's office, which said the full Cabinet text would be delivered to the Assembleia da República within the next few days. The Conselho de Ministros itself ran from 09:30 on Thursday morning and signed off the bill before the Carneiro meeting concluded; the proposta de lei was formally registered with the speaker's office before close of business on the same day.

The political-arithmetic test now shifts to the conferência de líderes scheduled for Wednesday 20 May, when Aguiar-Branco will set the parliamentary debate calendar. PS's internal labour-affairs working group is expected to circulate a position note over the weekend, and the bench's vote in the generality reading remains undecided heading into the week.