Portugal news in English.

Subscribe

The Portugal Brief
OE2027

Parties Pile a Record 2,864 Amendments Onto Portugal's 2027 Budget, With Chega Tabling 712 Before the 24 November Vote

A record 2,864 proposed changes to the 2027 State Budget, led by Chega (712) and PCP (653), range from fuel VAT and rent deductions to mortgage interest relief. None is law yet: each needs a majority before the final vote on 24 November.

The Portugal Brief 2 min read

Written in English, with the help of AI tools, from the Portuguese sources named in this story. How we work

Parties Pile a Record 2,864 Amendments Onto Portugal's 2027 Budget, With Chega Tabling 712 Before the 24 November Vote
The São Bento Palace, Lisbon. Photo: Matthew Black, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Parliament's parties have tabled a record 2,864 proposed changes to Portugal's 2027 State Budget, and Chega alone accounts for 712 of them. The proposals cover income tax, rents, mortgages, fuel and the retirement age, but none of them is law: each one has to win a majority in the votes that run up to the final vote on 24 November.

The count comes from the Assembleia da República's own website, as reported by Lusa and carried by Notícias ao Minuto and Jornal de Negócios on Saturday. Last year's record was 2,176.

Who tabled what

  • Chega: 712
  • PCP: 653
  • Livre: 504
  • Bloco de Esquerda: 368
  • PS: 200
  • JPP: 167
  • PAN: 125
  • PSD and CDS-PP (the governing parties, jointly): 84
  • Iniciativa Liberal: 51

The deadline for these amendments (propostas de alteração) ran to 30 minutes after Friday's hearing of Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento. At that hearing he warned that it is "difficult to accommodate tax proposals that unbalance the accounts", with the government forecasting a surplus of 0.1 percent of GDP in 2027.

Some proposals that would touch household budgets

These are party proposals as described by Lusa; whether any survives depends on the votes.

  • Chega wants a temporary cut in VAT on fuel while prices stay high, the return of the IRS (income tax) deduction for mortgage interest up to 1,200 euros, and a rise to 25 percent in the deduction for rent paid. It also wants to start lowering the retirement age, beginning by stopping next year's increase, according to Lusa's report of André Ventura's remarks.
  • PS proposes a temporary cut in ISP (the fuel tax) and a VAT exemption on a basket of food, paid for by suspending the planned cut in IRC (corporate tax) and repealing the "moderate rent" ceiling of 2,300 euros, Lusa reported.
  • Iniciativa Liberal wants 6 percent VAT on home construction without price caps or an expiry date, five years of IRS exemption for anyone who rents out a home that had been off the market, a lower IRS rate on rental income falling to zero for the longest contracts, and an IRS cut of about 1.6 billion euros, the party said in a statement reported by Lusa.

The governing parties' own changes include the parish-funding guarantee we reported on 31 October.

What happens next

Under the parliament's calendar, the budget committee (COFAP) prepares its voting scripts from 11 to 13 November. The chamber then debates the budget in the mornings of 18, 19, 20 and 23 November, with committee votes on the amendments each of those afternoons. The final global vote is on 24 November, as set out in our timetable of 27 October.

What it means for you

Nothing changes for your tax, rent or fuel bill because of these proposals yet. Each proposal needs a majority of the votes to pass, and the finance minister has warned that tax changes which unbalance the accounts will be hard to accommodate. Watch the committee votes from 18 November: that is when individual measures such as tax deductions are won or lost.

Read next