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Aware that it would be pressured by the current opposition, the Government arrived in Parliament this Thursday willing to try to show service and new proposals to alleviate the “drama” of housing credit. In the midst of announcements of measures aimed at banking, the Executive still wanted to warn families: it will be necessary for them to “prepare” their budgets for what is coming. And it ended up not convincing the parties that the new proposals bring with them a real impact.

The tension was especially evident between the Bloco de Esquerda, the party that requested the debate -and which presented a package of five proposals to combat the problem- and the Executive. It was the blockade member Mariana Mortágua who began, from the very beginning, challenging the PS deputies not to assume the role of the “blockade majority” and to respond to the families who are suffering from the dizzying rise in housing benefits.

That the problem is a true “drama”, nobody —not even the Executive— denied it. The Secretary of State for Finance, João Nuno Mendes, was in charge of bringing the news to the plenary, in a cautious tone. Acknowledging the “sensitivity” and “relevance” of the issue, he criticized the projects of the parties for not “respecting the contractual provisions” and promised that the Government will respond to the problem on three fronts: in the State Budgets, in the rent agreement that is being negotiated in social consultation and in a new law for banking.

The new measures, which include the suspension of early repayment installments or the extension of terms, do not invalidate, he stressed, that the “illusion” that interest rates will end can be fed. “We have to be serious about telling people the reality for which we have to plan our family budgets. This is the reality”.

The announcements did not calm the Bloc: the “hope” with which they began to listen to the intervention quickly “disappeared” when listening to the governor, Mariana Mortágua immediately attacked. “Get used to it, plan better, it’s your responsibility”, mocked the deputy, summing up João Nuno Mendes’ “confusing” intervention. “Either the government’s proposal has no impact or it does, and thus it will change the contractual conditions,” he warned. “You just lost the argument to reject the Bloc’s proposals. Tell people how they are going to live after January, because getting used to it doesn’t seem like a smart argument to me.”

In the ping-pong with Mortágua, João Nuno Mendes took the floor again to ensure that his speech was marked by great “honesty and seriousness”, insisting that “as he knows the markets and with the practice of his career”, he He refuses to say that the Euribor rates are out of the ordinary or support measures that endanger the legal security of contracts with banks. “On this matter we disagree.”

The Government’s proposals, he insists, show that the Executive “knows the law” and has “courage” to “carry forward the points that can make a difference to achieve objective things.” “We don’t have the logic of presenting proposals that at the end of the day seem to solve all the problems, but they deceive people with the illusion of an ease that they will not have,” she shot.

“It was a very careful intervention, because I was stepping on ice: while presenting a generic proposal, a word of hope, I warned that things will always be like this,” attacked Social Democrat Paulo Rios de Oliveira. “What is the impact of these measures? How many families, how many contracts? With that, we were a little more convinced.” “In the past, this amounted to tens of thousands of renegotiations,” the minister stressed.

Opposing presses, but always with different recipes

On the opposition side, there was no agreement on solutions — BE, PCP, Chega and Livre presented proposals — and consensus was only found on one point: the insufficiency of the government’s responses.

The Liberal Initiative, through the voice of deputy Carla Castro, began by criticizing the “restrictions on the real estate market” proposed by the Bloco, stressing that the State does not even know exactly what its own assets are (referring to the proposal that borrowers in a borderline situation can ask a public fund to buy their mortgage). For IL, the Block is encouraging “large-scale” credit defaults. “How will the real estate dream of the block be paid for?”

Paulo Rios de Oliveira promised that the party will present, already in the budget specialty phase, proposals on the subject. “The State has failed,” diagnosed Márcia Passos, also a member of the bench, assuring that the Government’s housing policy has been a succession of errors “addicted to ideological prejudices”, even during the pandemic. Still, she also harbored some criticism of the “unrealistic” and “unstable” measures proposed by the left. “And the government is watching, waiting, who knows, for the PSD to present measures and then react,” she concluded.

On the side of the communists, the parliamentary leader of the PCP, Paula Santos, criticized the government for letting the situation reach this extreme, both in the housing market, where there are “serious risks of family default”, and in general for the “aggravation” of the cost of living – and recalled the evictions during the days of the troika. The PS, she lashed out, does not want to take on the responsibilities of keeping families in a real “strangulation” situation — “apparently they are more concerned with the bank”.

PS defends its “structural measures” and asks the BE for “good will”

In its first intervention, the PS defended itself and seemed, from the outset, to corner the Bloc’s measures. First, to say that the Government has presented the “most revolutionary structural measures” in Housing and to admit that these policies “are not resolved overnight,” according to Deputy André Pinotes Batista. In response to Mortágua, the deputy recalled that the rigor in the accounts and housing policies are not exclusive measures —“he fought, like me, against a right that wanted to go far beyond the troika”—, he recalled, recovering the past common of the contraption

And he concluded: the measures proposed by the BE have “virtues”, but the question is whether the answers should be structural and to stimulate family income or only on contractual relations, a “more complex issue” to which the Bloco refers in your proposals. and in which it is not possible to “evade the supervision of European entities”. Thus, the socialists wanted to return the challenge to the SER and asked the blocists if they would be open to discussing the budget.

Nothing that pleased the Bloc or that responded to the measures presented by the party. “And then? And now what?” asked Mortágua, in response to the PS’s reminiscences about the troika and the contraption. “Do you think that a support of 125 euros is a structural response?” “Ask the BE for a good will but be prepared to fail all the proposals”, predicted the deputy, asking the PS to show that “good will” on its part and let the proposals reach the specialty stage.

Still in the PS, Iván Gonçalves returned to office, recalling that the Budget is at hand and that a set of measures to support families will come into force in October. And, on the other hand, remember the past of the PSD cuts —in the troika phase— to defend the present of the PS.

André Ventura, whose party, like BE, PCP, IL and Livre, has proposals on the subject, presented his measures saying that the real estate drama is “real and unprecedented” and affects families who have already had to pay large bills. . crisis “Many wonder: why did we have to put so much money in the banks if they don’t save us now? It’s very unfair.” It’s not just the government’s fault, he stresses: the increases already began in the days of the contraption. “Where have you been these seven years?”

Defending proposals such as the exemption from IMI in residential buildings during the term of the PRR, he also attacked excessive taxes: “There are too many Portuguese and foreigners to live off of those who work.” For Chega, the deputy Rita Matias still remembers the measures adopted by the Hungarian regime, of Viktor Orbán, similar to those of the party, praising them —and challenging the PS to stop “playing” with the proposals and to renounce the “prejudice ideology”. .

On the PAN side, Inês Sousa Real also spoke of “stifling” quota increases and loss of purchasing power, a cocktail “unacceptable” and that it cannot “wait” for the General State Budgets. “We need proposals immediately, housing credit and access to leases,” he stressed.

For Livre, Rui Tavares presented the party’s proposals, describing the housing loan rates as “a ticking time bomb”, advocating greater margins for the renegotiation of rates.