Lisbon, July 13, 2026 (Lusa) - The Socialist Party (PS) on Monday accused the government of turning a “geopolitical crisis into a fiscal opportunity” and noted that the government had “raised fuel taxes” and is “making money from inflation”.
At a press conference at the PS headquarters in Lisbon, André Moz Caldas, a member of the party’s National Secretariat, noted that “fuel prices are rising significantly again today”, which “further exacerbates the cost of living for the Portuguese people”, accusing the government of remaining “completely insensitive”.
“However, there is an even more serious matter that the government has omitted and concealed from the Portuguese people. The AD government has increased fuel taxes and is maintaining that increase today, after five months of rising prices,” he stated.
According to the PS leader, the government led by Luís Montenegro “refuses to revise its inflation forecasts” and “merely waits passively for the conflict in the Middle East to end and for the problem to resolve itself”.
“The government has turned a geopolitical crisis into a fiscal opportunity. The state cannot be the only one to gain whilst everyone else loses,” he said.
Recalling that the Socialists have already tabled proposals in parliament on more than one occasion to reduce fuel taxes, which were rejected, Moz Caldas argued that “it is up to the government to act at this point”.
“The PS remains open to resuming initiatives in parliament should the government continue to neglect the problems of the rising cost of living faced by the Portuguese people,” he said.
He noted that, on fuel, “the government is simply failing to act, keeping the taxes that the Portuguese pay per litre at exactly the same level as at the start of the crisis in March this year”.
“Today, the Portuguese pay around 6.2 cents more in tax per litre of petrol and 9.7 cents more in tax per litre of diesel than they did when this government took office on 1 January 2024,” he calculated, noting that “the Portuguese are worse off, but the government is making more and more money from fuel taxes”.
JF/ADB // ADB.
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