Invest in affordable housing, improve health care access – EU Council

The Council of the European Union (EU) has recommended today that Portugal prioritise affordable housing and improve access to healthcare, while ensuring that net expenditure remains within the limits already set.

This fairly predictable message takes on heightened significance considering it follows the government’s latest announcement is that it is planning to invest in unicorns.

A lay reader might question the executive’s priorities – particularly as Expresso today has a full-page spread on how the PSD/CDS-PP coalition may have three years left to ‘go’ (before the next scheduled legislative elections) but it is truly showing signs of wear, with internal rumblings of discontent becoming ever more palpable.

A simple recommendation, essentially trying to bring the government ‘back to reality’, is a reminder that it really hasn’t made any inroads on the country’s real problems: the ‘crisis’ in affordable accommodation, and the difficulty in accessing timely, effective healthcare.

The Council of Europe recommendation, published today as part of the 2026 European Semester, suggests the government should invest in “access to healthcare, in particular by addressing the shortage of healthcare professionals.

Lisbon should also “create incentives for a more efficient use of housing stock, including through a recalibration of the tax structure”.

In the mired area of housing, it is also recommended that the supply of housing be expanded – including affordable and social housing – and that “coordination and governance of housing policy be strengthened, alongside integrated planning at the urban, spatial planning and transport levels”.

Furthermore, “Lisbon must take measures to ensure the medium-term fiscal sustainability of the pension system and promote supplementary pension schemes, as well as improve the efficiency of the tax system, notably by streamlining tax benefits”.

It “must also improve access to risk capital and private funds, whilst continuing to focus on increasing financial literacy, and support investment in research and innovation”.

In the Council’s view, the continuity of reforms and investments established under the Recovery and Resilience Facility must also be ensured, and efforts to implement cohesion policy programmes must be accelerated; these may be reallocated to strategic priorities and within the flexibilities agreed as part of the mid-term review of the cohesion policy framework.

European ministers also state that the decarbonisation of transport systems must continue, alongside strengthening the electricity distribution system and improvements to water management.

“Furthermore, the Council, following the guidelines already set out by the European Commission, wishes Portugal to ensure that the measures taken to mitigate the impact of rising energy prices are temporary, targeted at protecting vulnerable households and meeting the needs of energy-intensive businesses, preserve incentives for energy saving, and that their budgetary cost is compatible with the commitments made under the EU budgetary framework”.

All this, given the country’s limitations – and the government’s perennial focus on cosying up to investors – sounds a little like the recommendations from a distant planet.

But the advice may serve to encourage Portugal’s government to look at reality a little more.

The Expresso article today, entitled “Government unravelling, and even more closed off”, shows that the prime minister’s electoral pledge that he intends to government “for everybody, everybody, everybody” is now no longer even taken seriously by members of his own party, who have admitted to the paper that “people are not better off” – in spite of the prime minister’s constant claims that they are – “and there has been no response to this”.

Wednesday next week will see what is called a “State of the Nation” speech – no doubt in which the leader of Portugal’s minority government will, once again, paint a rosy picture of his executive’s achievements. But they are notably thin on the ground, and the speech unfortunately coincides with one of the worst executed ‘initiatives’ in technological progress that anyone could possibly have imagined.

Source material: LUSA/ Expresso