In the PS government’s first debate on the State of the Nation since taking office last November, prime minister António Costa has reiterated his absolute conviction that there will be no Plan B, nor additional measures – despite the fact that European leaders have announced that they will be forging ahead with the process to sanction Portugal and Spain for their inability to meet deficit targets for 2015.
As many have explained, Portugal’s failure amounts to 0.2 percentage points.
The folly of economic sanctions at such a delicate moment in Europe’s history has been widely condemned, but at time of writing Costa was being incredibly bullish about it, telling leading critic, former PM Pedro Passos Coelho, to ‘get real’ and insisting that Portugal was on its way out of excessive deficit with “determination and rigour”.
As TVI24 reporting on the debate expected to last for some hours explained, Costa was using two verbs fairly consistently: “to comply” and “to act”.
For more on the PS leader’s speech and the debate in general, see our website update on Friday.
