The PS will propose that the extra balance in the Social Security budget be used to permanently increase the lowest pensions, the party’s general secretary, José Luís Carneiro, announced today.
In the closing speech of the PS Parliamentary Days, in Penafiel, district of Porto, José Luís Carneiro accused the Government of a “systematic failure” in forecasting the Social Security balance, a “hidden cat with its tail hanging out” in the State Budget, which he estimated at one billion euros.
“If we make the effort, with good will, to believe in the Government’s accounts, then it is possible to say that, at the very least, there is a ‘hidden cat with its tail out’. It is indeed a very significant cat, worth around a billion euros”, he said, considering that this is “in the systematic failure with which the Government predicts the Social Security balance for the previous year”.
The PS leader thus advanced one of the proposed changes to the specialty that will come to fruition “if the balance approved and demonstrated for this year’s Social Security is higher than what is in the State Budget” for 2026.
The proposal will consist of applying “this difference, up to a limit of 400 million euros”, in the “structural increase in the lowest pensions, transforming the extraordinary supplement allocated for this year into a permanent one”, he announced.
The accounts presented by José Luís Carneiro indicate that, in the execution of the State Budget for 2025, until August this year, there was already “a Social Security balance of 1,069 million euros more than what was executed in 2024”.
“But in the State Budget presented for 2026, the Government foresees, in public accounting, only a balance of over 99 million euros, that is, around 1,000 million euros less than that executed until August”, he pointed out.