Deputies approve urgent hearing for Fernando Medina to explain debt reduction | Parliament

The Budget and Finance Committee approved this Wednesday the urgent hearing of former Finance Minister Fernando Medina, current PS deputy, to give explanations on the reduction of public debt. The hearing was requested by the CDS-PP and had votes in favor from all parliamentary groups present, including the PS.

Last week, at the party congress, the parliamentary leader of the CDS-PP, Paulo Núncio, announced this request, accusing the previous government, of which Fernando Medina was Minister of Finance, of having made an “artificial reduction” of the debt with “money of pensions”, to the account of money from the Social Security Financial Stabilization Fund and Caixa Geral de Aposentações, which he considered “of enormous gravity”.

Last week, UTAO warned that the reduction in public debt in 2023 was “artificial” and that there are cases in which financial management options were conditioned by guidelines from the past Government.

Today, in the parliamentary committee, Núncio said that the UTAO report identified that the debt reduction was artificial as it was strongly influenced by the effect of consolidation of public entities. Furthermore, he stated, the report warns of political interference to apply resources to reduce debt and which involved the Social Security Financial Stabilization Fund and Caixa Geral de Aposentações.

Thus, the parliamentary leader of the CDS-PP considered that explanations were required from Fernando Medina.

PS deputy Carlos Pereira stated that the socialists would vote in favor of the invitation, and not a demand, for citizen Fernando Medina to give explanations and that they know that he is “completely available”, considering that the “tone and manner” as Núncio posed the question deserved this clarification.

The socialist deputy also said that in 2013, in the intervention of the “troika”, the exposure of the Social Security Financial Stabilization Fund was 78% and that before Vítor Gaspar left as Minister of Finance, he signed an ordinance so that the exposure would be 90%, considering that these facts demonstrate “the shamelessness” of the CDS-PP as it was then in the Government (led by Passos Coelho).

For the PSD, deputy Hugo Carneiro stated that the party recognizes that this is an invitation to citizen Fernando Medina but that Parliament cannot “remain indifferent to UTAO’s assessment”, even considering that it could be interesting to also provide clarifications in the parliamentary committee.

Carneiro considered that what the PS wanted with the reduction in the public debt ratio at the end of 2023 was to “make history”, so that others would be forced “to do the same or better” and that the comparison with the time of the “troika” is not appropriate because, then, it was a question of reducing national dependence on international creditors in a time of crisis.

For Chega, Rui Afonso considered that it is important to clarify this issue and that what happened was “a financial engineering maneuver” and that “ultimately the debt continues to fall on Portuguese taxpayers”.

The public debt ratio stood at 99.1% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2023 and in nominal terms decreased by 9.3 billion euros compared to the previous year, to 263.1 billion euros.