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The President of the Republic received in audience, today, the Secretary General of the Socialist Party, to whom he handed the following document containing issues concerning a future governance solution:

Considering the political crisis resulting from the approval by Parliament of the proposal to reject the programme of the XX Constitutional Government which, in the terms of Article No. 195 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, implies its dismissal, the President of the Republic decided, after hearing the opinions of the political parties holding seats in Parliament, of the social partners and other individualities concerned with the Country’s economy, to commission the Secretary General of the Socialist Party to present a stable, durable and credible governance solution.

As such, the President of the Republic requested from the Secretary General of the Socialist Party the formal clarification of the issues that, omitted in the distinct and asymmetric documents, subscribed between the Socialist Party, the Left Wing Block, the Portuguese Communist Party and the Ecologist Party “The Greens”, induce doubts as to the stability and durability of a minority government formed by the Socialist Party, within the period of a legislature:

a) Approval of confidence motions;
b) Approval of State Budgets, particularly the 2016 Budget;
c) Compliance with the rules of budgetary discipline applying to all Euro Zone countries and subscribed by the Portuguese State, specifically those resulting from the Stability and Growth Pact, from the Budgetary Treaty, from the European Stability Mechanism and from Portugal’s participation in the Economic and Monetary Union and in the Banking Union;
d) Respect for Portugal’s international commitments within the collective defence organizations;
e) The role of the Standing Committee of Social Consultation, given the relevance of its contribution to social cohesion and to the Country’s development;
f) Stability of the financial system, given its fundamental role in the financing of the Portuguese economy.

The clarifying of these issues is all the more decisive, since the continuity of a government exclusively comprised by the Socialist Party depends upon the parliamentary support of the political factions with which it subscribed the documents “Joint Position on the political situation” and as to the sustainability of the economic recovery, of job creation, and of the guarantee that the financing of the State and of the economy will be maintained throughout the whole of the XIII legislature.