“Will Eurico Brilhante Dias and António Costa know English? The paragraph of the quoted text – and which PSD MEPs still did not support – limits the increase in interest rates to three conditions”, refers the first vice president of the PSD in a publication on the social network Twitter.
Eurico Brilhante and @antoniocostapm will they know english? The paragraph of the quoted text – and which PSD members still did not support – limits the rise in interest rates to 3 conditions ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/F10FHI80UG
— Paulo Rangel (@PauloRangel_pt) October 26, 2022
These three conditions are, according to Paulo Rangel, “maintaining economic forecasts, proportionality thinking about households, companies and impact on the economy” and “protecting interest rates on the sovereign debt of peripheral countries such as Portugal”.
“Costa, Medina and Centeno must say whether they agree with the criteria in this paragraph or whether they propose another alternative to fight inflation,” he challenged.
On the first day of the debate on the general proposal for the state budget for 2023, in response to the PS, the prime minister defended that “successive interest rate hikes do not contribute to controlling inflation, but contribute to increasing the risk of recession in Europe’s economies.” “.
“Since 2015, we have shown that the best way to have correct public accounts is not with austerity, but with growth, with employment, with better wages. In this way we are consolidating our economy and the sustainable growth trajectory that we have followed. we will persevere, refusing this campaign by the PPE, the PPD/PSD for an interest rate hike by the ECB,” António Costa added.
The issue was raised by PS Group leader Eurico Brilhante Dias, who invoked “a policy document” from the European People’s Party (PPE), of which the PSD is a part, dated 29 September, in which he said, asked the ECB to remain determined to raise interest rates”.
Eurico Brilhante Dias accused the PSD of having a position in Portugal and another in Brussels, where “it approves, shelters the role of the most conservative right” in Europe, “of the hawks of the ECB, which wants to reduce the interest even if it jeopardizes economic growth”.
The document, a PSD source explained, came from the PPE’s parliamentary days in Crete, and despite not being voted on, it did not have the approval of Portuguese Social Democrat MEPs on several counts.
In the Twitter post, Rangel shares part of that document, underlining the passage referred to by the PS, which reads in English: “The European People’s Party group calls on the ECB to maintain its determination to raise interest rates while the ECB predicts remain unchanged, taking into account the proportionality assessment. We note the launch of the Transmission Protection Instrument (ICT)”, an instrument created to prevent the rise in interest rates from hurting the most indebted countries.
Source: DN
