Portugal’s ‘clean exit’ from its adjustment programme in 2014 was engineered, prime minister António Costa told RTP television cameras this week.
The true state of State Bank CGD was “made up” to look considerably better, and now is the time for Europe to wake up to the problem of Portugal’s debt, he said.
Elsewhere, PSD leader Passos Coelho has been complaining that President Marcelo is too pro- Portugal’s Socialist government.
“Thank goodness he is no longer the president of the PSD”, he said in an initiative promoted by Brazil’s Jornal Eco. “He is doing everything for economic agents to believe more in the government than distrust it”.
Passos Coelho – facing a looming leadership contest for control of the party – then compared the support currently given by President Marcelo to that conferred by former president and two-term PSD prime minister Cavaco Silva.
Marcelo wasted no time quashing Passos’ mud-slinging – saying a president could not have favourites – but the spat has been overshadowed by the interview given with PM Costa who suggested EU leaders have to face up to member states’ unsustainable levels of debt before the multiple situations creep any higher.
He told his interviewer on Monday night that until October 2017 (the time of the German legislative elections) “Europe will not be discussing anything relating to debt”, adding that “sooner or later the European Union will have to stop ignoring a problem that affects a large group of countries”.
