Chega this Monday classified the Iberian interconnection agreement as an “act of diplomatic illusionism”, announcing that it will join the PSD in calling for an urgent debate and present a resolution to parliament to reject the document.
“What was presented as a great victory for Portugal is a huge mistake we are making, it is an act of diplomatic illusionism, like few others, performed by Prime Minister António Costa and it is a devastating project for the Portuguese in terms of cost which are still difficult to estimate at the moment we speak here,” defended André Ventura during a press conference at the party headquarters in Lisbon.
For Chega, the agreement is “a bad deal for Portugal, it is an agreement in which the government manages to sell an illusion, without specifying or making clear what costs the Portuguese will have with this disaster”.
“But above all, it is an agreement that greatly damages the Portuguese export capacity, removes and reduces important strategic locations such as the port of Sines and essentially values the Spaniards. It is therefore incomprehensible that the Portuguese government has signed it,” he stressed.
For these reasons, Chega’s leader said the party will join the PSD’s request for an urgent debate in parliament with the prime minister before the start of the budget process on this issue, a position Ventura said he ” this morning’ had communicated. to the chairman of the PSD, Luís Montenegro.
In addition, the party today presented a draft resolution – which has no force of law, being a recommendation to the executive – “to request the Assembly of the Republic to reject the international agreement concluded by Portugal”.
“This motion for a resolution was tabled today and, in order to participate in the urgent debate requested by the PSD, will cause the Assembly of the Republic to reject the agreement concluded by the government and commit the government to future agreements on energy issues. , to always have the approval or ratification of the Assembly of the Republic in this matter,” he explained.
For Chega’s president, the deal signed last week presents “five massive weaknesses with structural costs.” Regarding the “construction of interconnections”, Ventura said that “the APA [Associação Portuguesa do Ambiente] the planned route between Celorico da Beira and the Spanish border had already failed, so paths will have to be reinvented and the route will have to be changed over more than 150 kilometers, with probable costs to the Portuguese government”.
“The government could have trusted the agreements that already existed in 2014 and 2015 with Spain and France. She did the opposite, deciding to start from scratch and make new arrangements. These new agreements come with a very big risk: it is that while the 2014 and 2015 agreements had clear funding from the European Union, the new tripartite agreement will have a large dose of Portuguese funding,” he explained.
Ventura also said the government is “dropping two of the three connections”, “maintaining the Bay of Biscay”, but “the commitment to construction in the Pyrenees is disappearing”.
“It will therefore prevent Portuguese consumers from accessing the benefits of the European market and preventing European consumers from benefiting from renewable electricity in Portugal,” he defended.
For Chega “this agreement appreciates the Spanish gas terminals in Barcelona and Valencia and the port of Sines loses its strategic importance”.
“Finally, it is incomprehensible that, in an agreement of this type, the government did not value the gas reserves that exist in Portugal and which, according to the Minister of Economy, aimed in particular at the Algarve, would take 15 years. A turnover of about two billion euros a year to our country,” he insisted.
Portugal, Spain and France decided on Thursday to move forward with a “green energy corridor”, by sea, between Barcelona and Marseille (BarMar) instead of crossing the Pyrenees (MidCat).
The timetable, sources of funding and costs related to the implementation of the Green Corridor will be discussed in December in Alicante, Spain.
The three countries will immediately begin preparatory work to make progress with BarMar and also to strengthen electrical connections between Spain and France, “in close cooperation with the European Commission”, according to the agreement.
The Speaker of the Assembly of the Republic has scheduled an extraordinary meeting of the Leaders’ Conference on Tuesday to discuss the PSD’s request to schedule an urgent debate on the “Agreement on Iberian Energy Interconnections”.
Source: DN
