General Daily Briefing — Wednesday, 13 May 2026

Conselho Nacional de Educação Walks the Government's Higher-Education Access Rewind Into a 'Consequências Gravosas' Parecer

The Conselho Nacional de Educação unanimously adopted on 4 May 2026 — and made public on Tuesday 12 May — a 24-page parecer warning that the government's proposed return to a one-exam minimum for higher-education access carries 'consequências gravosas e impactos preocupantes' for the system. The Ministry of Education and Higher Education, under Fernando Alexandre, has circulated a project diploma that lets each institution require between one and three entrance exams, walking back the 2023 PS rule that imposed a two-exam minimum. The CNE flags four specific risks: a 'probable reduction' in young students entering higher education, a narrowing of the special-competition adult tracks, a compression of the master's and doctoral pipeline, and an 'accentuation of socioeconomic and sociocultural inequalities' as students from public secondary schools in interior districts lose the levelling effect of standardised national exams. The council 'recomenda vivamente' that the proposal be 'retomada e repensada.' The Comissão de Educação at Parliament takes the diploma in late May.

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Banco de Portugal's 2025 Behavioural Supervision Report Walks Banks Into €8.91 Million of Customer Refunds

Banco de Portugal's 2025 Behavioural Supervision Report, released Tuesday 12 May, confirms that Portuguese banks had to return €8.91 million to clients during 2025 — €8.24 million in commissions improperly charged and €670 thousand in incorrectly taken interest. The €8.24 million indevidas commission bucket splits across four lines: €4.20 million from preçário violations, €2.11 million from product-suitability mismatches, €1.33 million from default-handling charges that breached PARI/PERSI cap rules, and €600 thousand in residual one-off matters. The enforcement file behind the refunds is materially larger: 126 cartas de advertência, 423 recomendações, 3,298 determinações específicas and 52 contraordenação proposals lodged against named institutions. The report lands alongside the BdP's multi-year reformulation of the Folheto de Comissões — the Aviso 8/2009 fee-disclosure regime that has produced dozens-of-page documents — with the Comparador de Comissões on bportugal.pt/clientebancario acting as the cross-bank benchmark through 2028.

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Eurostat Reads Portugal at 2,135 Refused-Entry Decisions in 2025 — All at Airport Borders

Eurostat's 2025 enforcement-of-immigration-legislation file, released Tuesday, reads Portugal at 2,135 refusal-of-entry decisions during the year — 1.6% of the 132,600 EU-27 total — with every single decision taken at an airport border. Lisboa Humberto Delgado, Porto Sá Carneiro, Faro and the Açores and Madeira regional terminals make up the entire refusal file. The EU aggregate runs the opposite way: most refusals across the Union happen at land borders, but Portugal's only external Schengen frontier is functionally aviation-only because the land border with Spain is internal-Schengen. The parallel irregular-migration print reads Portugal at 735 irregularly present third-country nationals — 0.1% of the EU total — placing Lisbon at the joint-bottom of the league table with Finland. The 2,135-decision baseline lands as Parliament moves the transposition of the EU Migration Pact through the spring legislative cycle, with new screening and pre-entry procedures due mid-2026.

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Montenegro Walks 400 New PSP Agents Into the Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Commands

Prime Minister Luís Montenegro announced after a Monday 12 May meeting at São Bento with Lisbon's Carlos Moedas and Porto's Pedro Duarte that 400 new PSP agents will be assigned to the two metropolitan commands by the end of 2026 — 200 to Lisbon, 200 to Porto. The 400 will come out of two PSP recruitment cohorts already in training at the Escola Prática in Torres Novas, with the first cohort finishing in June and the second at year-end. On top of the new headcount, Montenegro confirmed that the Ministry of Internal Administration is preparing a reorganisation of esquadra services in Porto, Lisbon and Setúbal that will move roughly 500 existing agents from back-office work to street patrol. The combined deployment — 900 patrol-equivalent agents across the three urban areas — is the government's most visible non-parliamentary policy delivery this week. The same meeting produced a separate decision to donate the former Presidência do Conselho de Ministros headquarters to the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa.

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Bolieiro Walks the Açores Into the First Conferência de Regiões in Ponta Delgada Asking for More US and NATO Troops at Lajes

Regional president José Manuel Bolieiro told the first Conferência de Regiões in Ponta Delgada on Monday 12 May 2026 — a new annual gathering organised by Diário de Notícias and Açoriano Oriental — that the Açores want more US and NATO troops on the archipelago: 'Sem dúvida. Dos Estados Unidos e também da NATO.' Bolieiro's argument links the intensified US use of the Lajes airbase since February to a broader pitch that the Açores have become 'cada vez mais relevante' geopolitically and geostrategically for Portugal, the EU and NATO. He framed the troop request alongside four non-military spending lines he wants the alliance to commit to: submarine-cable security in the transatlantic corridor that runs through the archipelago, data-centre development with Google negotiations already disclosed, blue-economy and marine research anchored on the EMEPC, and the space industry at the Santa Maria launch facility. Bolieiro also reiterated his call for an eventual revisão of the 1995 Lajes Agreement, when the US$40 million per year financial counterparts were eliminated.

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Portugal Misses the Eurovisão Final for the First Time Since 2019 as Bandidos do Cante's 'Rosa' Falls in Vienna

Bandidos do Cante, the Beja-anchored cante alentejano-pop fusion group that won the 60th Festival da Canção on 7 March 2026 with 'Rosa,' failed to qualify from the first Eurovisão semifinal in Vienna on Tuesday 12 May 2026, breaking Portugal's six-year streak of consecutive Grand Final appearances. The Wiener Stadthalle semifinal produced ten qualifiers — Greece, Finland, Belgium, Sweden, Moldova, Israel, Serbia, Croatia, Lithuania and Poland — none of them Portugal. Portugal performed fifth of fifteen with a sparse cante-anchored staging that leaned into the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status of the polyphonic singing tradition rather than the conventional Eurovisão-pop format. The elimination is Portugal's sixth missed final since semifinals were introduced in 2004; the most recent was Conan Osíris with 'Telemóveis' in 2019. RTP retained its commentary track for the 16 May Grand Final on RTP1 but will see audience numbers fall materially without a national entry on stage.

The Portugal Brief — daily news for residents, expats and observers of Portugal. Published in Lisbon.

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