Earlier, in Esposende, during the ceremony to lay the first stone of the future City Park, Luís Montenegro highlighted the Government’s commitment to combating bureaucracy, arguing that it is necessary to speed up processes to decide more quickly.
The Prime Minister said that the way forward is to trust each other more and “strongly punish” anyone who turns out to be unworthy of that trust.
“We’re going to have to trust each other more and we’re also going to have to hold each other more accountable when we trust (…). We have to monitor ourselves and we have to severely punish those who don’t deserve our trust. That’s the principle and that’s how we we will implement it in the near future”, he said.
According to the Prime Minister, bureaucracy in Portugal “inexplicably grew enormously” in Portugal in recent years.
“In the digital era, we have managed to make things more complex and we will have to make several changes in this area”, he reiterated, promising government measures in the near future.
He added, for example, that the Government has already launched a competition to reinforce the inspection teams for community funds by 60%.
“We will have more inspection, but we will, at the same time, greatly alleviate the bureaucratic burden. Therefore, there will be less bureaucracy, but there will be more inspection. If there is more inspection, there will be more accountability as well. We will try to decide faster”, he said .
According to Montenegro, Portugal is making decisions very slowly” and is losing “many projects due to lack of decision-making capacity”.
The Prime Minister was speaking after listening to the Mayor of Esposende, Benjamim Pereira, complain about the bureaucracy he had to overcome in the process of building the City Park.
For Montenegro, the country needs projects like this.
“Our biggest challenge today is to offer well-being, because, if we don’t offer well-being, we will continue to see our young people go abroad”, he warned.
He said that the current Government has “an agenda for transforming the country” and that everyone needs to focus on that agenda “and not on the side agendas that fill the attention of a few” that have “a very present impact on the media but not on people’s concrete lives.”
Pointing out that he doesn’t really like groundbreaking ceremonies, Montenegro said he will only do so when “reproductive projects” are at stake, which generate wealth and well-being.
