The President of the Republic will carry out his threat if the government’s housing package continues as it is. In other words, asking the Constitutional Court (TC) for a preventive investigation into some rules of the housing support package, especially forced rental, pushed the Observer forward.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa does not hide his criticism of António Costa’s Executive plan, which he considered “impracticable”. the housing package even risks being held back in Belém. This is because the President of the Republic threatens to send the diploma referring to the forced lease to the TC if the government does not drop this measure of the housing program – part of the package is in public consultation until next Friday, with approval of the proposals expected in the Council of Ministers on 30 March.
A source close to the head of state told The Observer “If the government upholds the idea of forced leasing, it is more or less obvious that the president should send it to the Constitutional Court.”
If confirmed, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will implement what he said at the beginning of the month when he said he could send the government’s measures to the Constitutional Court as soon as they arrived in Belém, in case they raise legal doubts.
“I will of course do what I always do at that moment: [se] I have very many doubts about the unconstitutionality or someone has – I may not have very many doubts, but someone does – to have certainty of the law, I ask the Constitutional Court to ‘look, declare the legal certainty,'” he said.
The first part of the “More housing” program was approved last week by the Council of Ministers, with the President of the Republic announcing on Tuesday evening that he has decided to bring into force the Decree-Law on rent support and housing loans. He considered the “necessary and urgent measures to support families, given the deteriorating economic and social situation, although he regretted that they were not extended more, namely through taxation”.
In response to Marcelo, the Prime Minister’s office, António Costa, released a note pointing out that the Mais Habitação program has been in public discussion since February 16 and “contains several fiscal measures that the government will submit to the Assembly of the Republic”.
Earlier, on Monday, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had already strongly criticized the government’s housing program. “As it is conceived, the housing package is unusable from the start. Either at the point of departure or at the point of arrival,” he said on the program Redação Aberta, on CMTV.
The head of state even compared the package of measures announced by the government to “the so-called poster laws”. “These are laws that seem to proclaim certain programmatic principles, but the idea is not exactly that they are put into practice. It is that bills remain as posters”he explained.
Source: DN
