The President of the Government knew that the Minister for Cohesion had doubts about her husband’s suitability for applying for Community funds and it was he who advised her requesting an opinion from the Attorney General’s Office “a little over a year ago.” António Costa said this Thursday in the general policy debate, that this same opinion is “unequivocal at various levels.” The prime minister recalled “conclusion 37” that exempts the minister from faults, but nothing said in the 39th and last of the conclusions of this opinion that warns of the “darkness” of the law and suggests that the legislator modify it.
António Costa says that the minister asked him about the “problem of a conflict of interest situation” and that “she herself requested an opinion request from the general secretariat of the Council of Ministers.” This first opinion, also mentioned in the Observer news on the subject, “said that there was not conflict of interest”, something that the prime minister’s legal advice “confirmed“.
But for the prime minister, according to his first-person account, that was not enough. “I told the minister at the time that aware of the sensitivity of the problemthere was nothing to ask the Consultative Council of the PGR to proceed to assess the case and issue an opinion”, recalled the prime minister.
For António Costa, the opinion of the PGR is “unequivocal on several levels”, this is because “in the first place, it says, very clearly, that nothing suggests that the validity of the act that admits the request or the act that defers the subsidy has been compromised, no history of non-compliance conduct functions of the Minister of Territorial Cohesion. This is conclusion number 37, which is absolutely unequivocal.”
The Prime Minister said nothing, however, about the 39th and final conclusion of the PGR opinion, which states that “the literal fixation on the concepts of public contracting and collective person (…) represents a double dark factor and that must be carefully considered, either by the parliamentary legislator or by the Government”.
António Costa also said that the same PGR “found that none of the bills that were presented here to the RA, none of the reform proposals, none of the replacement proposals were ever proposed. extend to community subsidies the restriction that exists for public contracting”.
António Costa’s responses came after the first intervention of the Chega leader, André Ventura, who asked: “Is this the ethic you wanted to impose on the government? Will the minister’s husband return the money? Can the Portuguese trust that these cases will not be perpetuated? Ventura also questioned António Costa if he thought the case was ethical. On this, he received no answer.
Source: Observadora
