Good morning. Here is your Thursday briefing for 13 August 2026 — the day's essential Portugal stories, from a rental-law overhaul that could unfreeze the country's oldest rents to
Portuguese emigration has held steady at about 70,000 departures a year for three years, the Observatorio da Emigracao reports, with Switzerland now the top destination after Brexit curbed arrivals to the UK. Portugal still has one of the world's highest emigrant shares.
Savannah Resources has signed new land agreements with the baldio commons communities of Tras-os-Montes for its Barroso lithium project, including community seats, inflation-linked compensation and a €500,000-a-year foundation — as a protest camp nearby drew about a thousand people.
The Education Ministry has opened an inquiry into schools that sent national-exam papers for grading after the deadline, disrupting the first year of digital marking. Teachers' union FENPROF accuses Minister Fernando Alexandre of shifting blame and vows to block any sanctions.
A generic version of the diabetes drug dapagliflozin has entered Portugal's reference-pricing system, but the APDP warns that if pharmacies run out of the generic, patients buying the branded original could pay around €40 for a medicine that recently cost €4 to €5.
From July 2027, energy regulator ERSE will reconfigure the meters of six million households on the flat tariff so they can see the savings of time-of-use pricing, while simplifying the bi-hourly and tri-hourly plans by scrapping most summer-winter schedule switches.
The government's rental-law overhaul has reached Parliament, and its sharpest clause would restrict how Portugal's frozen pre-1990 'old rents' pass on when the original tenant dies — opening the door to bringing some of the country's cheapest homes back toward market value.
