General Daily Briefing — Monday, 11 May 2026
The latest Portugal news, analysis, and what it means for expats and residents.
Electric Vehicle Charging in Portugal in 2026 — A Practical Guide to the Mobi.E Network, the CEME/OPC Split, the EGME Tariff That Dropped 30.8% on 1 January, the Via Verde Eletric Super-Chargers and How EDP, Galp, Endesa and Iberdrola Price the Same kWh
Charging an electric vehicle in Portugal runs through the Mobi.E national network. This 2026 guide walks through the CEME/OPC split, the three-component bill, the EGME tariff drop, power classes from standard to ultra-fast, the Via Verde El…
Private Health Insurance (Seguro de Saúde) in Portugal in 2026 — A Practical Guide to Médis, Multicare, Allianz Care and AdvanceCare, the ASF Framework, the PerÃodos de Carência, the Co-Pagamentos, Pre-Existing Rules and the IRS 15% Deduction
Portugal's private health insurance (seguro de saúde) market — supervised by ASF — covers what the SNS queues for. The four big insurers, the carência calendar, co-pagamentos, pre-existing rules, ADSE, and the 15% IRS deduction.
📋 In This Edition
- OECD Reads Portugal's Chronic-Disease Bill at 4.12% of GDP a Year Through 2050
- Castro Almeida Cuts Portugal's Industrial-Licensing Code From 600 to 200 Articles
- Braga's Token Trust Becomes Portugal's First CMVM-Authorised Tokenisation Platform
- Mercadona Loses Portuguese Market Share for the First Time Since 2019
- Chega Formalises a Comissão de Inquérito Into Operação Influencer Targeting António Costa
- São Jorge Felt by All of the Açores Central Group After 4.6-Magnitude Tectonic Earthquake
OECD Reads Portugal's Chronic-Disease Bill at 4.12% of GDP a Year Through 2050
The OECD's new flagship study on non-communicable diseases lands with a hard number for Portugal: roughly 4.12% of GDP every year between 2026 and 2050 disappears against a counterfactual where the four major chronic-disease groups are removed. Diabetes carries 1.37% of GDP on its own, cancer 1.23%, cardiovascular 0.81% and respiratory 0.71%. The OECD anchors the projection in 1990-2023 prevalence growth — diabetes +87%, respiratory +49%, cancer +36%, cardiovascular +27% — and recommends a strengthened primary-care line. The recommendation arrives into a Portuguese tape that still has roughly 1.7 million users without an assigned family doctor.
Castro Almeida Cuts Portugal's Industrial-Licensing Code From 600 to 200 Articles
The Minister of Economy and Territorial Cohesion told Jornal de Negócios at the weekend that the working draft for a new industrial-licensing diploma cuts the existing rulebook by two-thirds — from 600 articles to 200 — and revokes multiple satellite portarias that have layered over the 2015-vintage Sistema da Indústria Responsável. The minister couples the regulatory cut with a national plan for 'pequenos Sines' business parks: a dozen pre-cleared sites across regions outside the Lisboa-Setúbal-Aveiro corridor, modelled on Sines's one-window licensing plus port-and-energy infrastructure approach. The decreto-lei has not yet reached Conselho de Ministros for sign-off — Diário da República publication is targeted for early June.
Braga's Token Trust Becomes Portugal's First CMVM-Authorised Tokenisation Platform
The Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários has authorised Token Trust, a Braga-based fintech led by Paulo Cardoso do Amaral, PatrÃcia Santos and Alberto Amaral, to tokenise Portuguese shares and bonds on a permissioned DLT spine that consolidates issuance, trading and settlement on a single platform. The authorisation moves under the EU DLT Pilot Regime (Regulation 2022/858), not MiCA, since tokenised shares and bonds remain MiFID II financial instruments. The pitch targets the €10 trillion of low-yield European household savings that ESMA and the European Commission have flagged as structurally under-deployed.
Mercadona Loses Portuguese Market Share for the First Time Since 2019
Worldpanel by Numerator — the former Kantar Portugal panel that tracks roughly four thousand households — has just dropped its Q1 2026 distribution print, and Mercadona's six-year run as the unbroken share-of-wallet winner ends. Pingo Doce and Lidl both print Q1 gains. The headline release reads 'sinais de maior dinamismo no curto prazo' into the storm-and-energy quarter. Three structural drivers sit behind the slip: a slower Mercadona expansion rhythm, Pingo Doce's promotional move at the end of 2025, and household basket compression that drove a trade-down move from mid-tier private label to the deeper-discount tiers.
Chega Formalises a Comissão de Inquérito Into Operação Influencer Targeting António Costa
Chega tabled on Saturday a parliamentary motion for a Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito covering three Costa-government files: lithium exploration at Romano (Montalegre) and Barroso (Boticas), the Sines green-hydrogen complex and the Start Campus data-centre project. The motion cites the leaked wiretap of the Christmas Eve 2022 call between Costa and Diogo Lacerda Machado. PSD has refused to viabilise the CPI 'during an ongoing investigation,' so the motion parks until September, when the Assembleia da República's auto-activation rule for opposition-tabled motions held over from spring kicks in.
São Jorge Felt by All of the Açores Central Group After 4.6-Magnitude Tectonic Earthquake
IPMA registered a 4.6-magnitude earthquake at 12:21 Sunday afternoon, with the epicentre roughly six kilometres south of Santo Antão on São Jorge island. The maximum felt intensity was V on the modified Mercalli scale, and the event was perceived across all islands of the central group — Pico recording the lowest intensity. Civil protection registered a single landslide that briefly blocked access to Fajã dos Cubres in Calheta. CIVISA classified the event as tectonic, distinct from the 2022-2023 volcano-tectonic swarm — depth around 10 km, on the plate-boundary structures between the Faial-Pico Fracture Zone and the Açores Triple Junction.
The Portugal Brief — daily news for residents, expats and observers of Portugal. Published in Lisbon.
