Évora, Portugal, July 15, 2025 (Lusa) - Former Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes said on Tuesday that he hopes the announced increase in defence spending will preserve the railways, saying he had heard “rumours from a high source” to that effect.
The mayor of Figueira da Foz, who is independent but is running for re-election with the support of the PSD, was one of the speakers at the PSD/CDS-PP parliamentary conference, which ends today in Évora, on a panel on ‘Local Power and State Reform’.
“There is a buzz, a buzz, but from a high source, that the welfare state will remain intact to boost investment in defence. So, where will it be touched? Either the economy grows or there is a buzz that the cut may be in the railways. There has to be cuts somewhere, I just want to say that in the railways it is a crass mistake,” he warned.
On the panel’s theme, Santana Lopes acknowledged that it was “bold” of Luís Montenegro’s second government to create a separate ministry for State Reform. Still, they said he had an increasing interest in the powers of intermediate structures.
‘I, who until a certain point always acknowledged the path of regionalisation, now place greater trust in central power than in regional entities,’ he said.
For this reason, he argued, the war must be “for bureaucratic efficiency and for challenging the small powers, the little dictators,” which he believes sometimes exist in intermediate structures.
The other speaker on the panel, the PSD/CDS-PP/IL candidate for Porto City Council, Pedro Duarte, was more enthusiastic about state reform, saying he had “total and absolute” confidence in the prime minister’s vision, which he described as “a change of chip”.
“After eight years in which this matter received little attention, those eleven months of learning have allowed the prime minister himself to realise in an absolutely clear and unequivocal way that this is a fundamental issue for the future of the country and he is taking it on as such,” he argued.
Pedro Duarte considered that state reform could also be “a great opportunity” for local authorities, which he hopes to join after the elections on 12 October.
“And now, if pilot projects are needed to try out this deeper decentralisation, Porto will be available to kick things off, as I am sure others will be,” he said.
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