Council of Ministers Greenlights the Prestação Social Única — 13 Solidarity Supports Fold Into a Single Means Test on 29 May and a Trabalho Social Counterpart Anchors the €500 Million PRR Window for August

The Council of Ministers approves the Prestação Social Única (PSU) at its Friday 29 May 2026 meeting, closing a file that was first promised to Brussels four years ago and is now backed against a hard August window inside the Recovery and Resilience Plan. The reform consolidates 13 supports from the solidarity sub-system into a single means-tested benefit, attaches a controversial "trabalho social" counterpart for working-age recipients and, if it does not enter into force by the end of August, exposes Portugal to the loss of a €500 million PRR tranche.

The headline architecture of the new benefit, as drawn by the Secretary of State for Social Security, Filipa Lima, contains four moving parts:

• 13 supports merged under one access door: the Rendimento Social de Inserção sits at the centre of the consolidation, alongside twelve other solidarity-subsystem payments. The Complemento Solidário para Idosos is explicitly carved out and continues to run on its own rules.
• One means test: a single household income and asset reading replaces the patchwork of different eligibility ladders that today force families to apply benefit by benefit at Segurança Social.
• Tapered work incentive: additional earned income no longer triggers the automatic loss of available support, with the goal of removing the well-documented poverty trap that has dogged the RSI for two decades.
• Trabalho social obligation: active-age beneficiaries take on a participation duty in social-solidarity activities. Pensioners and children are exempt and the exact hours and form of the counterpart will be set in secondary regulation.

The deadline sets the political pressure. The PSU is the reform that releases the next solidarity-sub-system tranche in the PRR, and the €500 million payment hinges on the diploma being in force by the close of August. Parliament therefore receives the bill on a compressed timetable, with the labour minister Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho expected to push the legislation alongside the contested labour-code overhaul that triggered the 3 June general strike.

The political backdrop is uncomfortable for the executive. Prime Minister Luís Montenegro framed the approval as evidence that "there is a Government governing" while critics from the left bench, the CGTP and several social-economy entities argue that the trabalho social clause risks turning a poverty-reduction tool into a workfare regime. The exact counterpart hours, the type of activity that qualifies, and the sanction regime for non-participation move into the secondary regulation that the Ministry of Labour now has to draft within weeks.

What This Means for Expats

• Eligibility window: long-term legal residents who currently draw the RSI, the Abono de Família or other solidarity supports will be migrated to the new PSU. Existing entitlements continue, but the means test is recalculated.
• Less Segurança Social paperwork: applicants previously stacking two or three separate processes inside Segurança Social Direta will lodge a single application once the diploma is in force.
• Work transition smoother: taking a part-time job or a short contract no longer means losing the benefit overnight, which matters for households moving between casual work and the subsídio de desemprego.
• New obligations: active-age beneficiaries should expect a participation requirement once secondary regulation lands. The exact hours and exemption list will determine the real load.
• Pension households unaffected: CSI recipients and pensioners remain outside the PSU perimeter. The 2027 retirement-age timetable continues to run on its own track.

The next checkpoints sit on the parliamentary calendar and on the secondary regulation. The Assembleia da República has roughly two months to approve the framework law before the PRR clock runs out, and the Ministry of Labour will then publish the portaria that fixes the trabalho social hours, the qualifying activities and the sanction regime. The PSU finally moves from a Brussels promise to a paying instrument the day the new means-tested formula is plugged into the Segurança Social computers.