The Algarve mayors group AMAL has selected a lawyer to represent its views in a court action to halt the exploration for oil and gas across much of the region’s land mass and has praised the foreign community for its involvement in the issue.
AMAL members met this week and approved the hiring of lawyer João Vidal Almeida to lodge the case against the exploration and extraction concessions granted in suspicious circumstances to Portfuel, owned by local businessman Sousa Cintra.
Jorge Botelho said to Sul Informacão that the mayors wanted to take on someone local and Almeida, from Álvaro Pedro Café – Sociedade de Advogados in Faro, fits the bill with his long connection to civic movements and the legal issues surrounding tourism.
"Our expectation is that within two to three weeks an injunction will be lodged to suspend exploration, which then will be followed by the main petition for the annulment of the contracts," added Botelho.
The mayors may be pushing against an open door as the government already has asked the advisory board of the Attorney General's Office to offer a formal opinion on the Algarve's land-based concession contracts as there are "arguments to terminate the concession agreements with Portfuel for breach of contractual obligations," according to the national newspaper Público.
"We know how long these things take, with advances and setbacks, so we also will keep the pressure up from our side," said Botelho who when asked for his opinion on the recent parliamentary hearing in which the former Minister for the Environment Jorge Moreira da Silva accused the mayors of trying to scare the public and that ill-informed ‘retired foreigners’ were meddling in the national plan for oil and gas.
Jorge Botelho considered Moreira’s statements as "gratuitously offensive to the Algarve" and said that the foreign community in the Algarve “is much valued and is part of our heritage” but declined to say more as to respond to Moreira’s gratuitous insults, he said, would serve no good purpose.
Aljezur mayor José Amarelinho commented, "Here in the Algarve there’s always been people from all over, people who come from afar, but that's what gave us our identity. Offending the foreign community that has been here for many years and that has helped us develop the region, creating jobs and wealth, which has helped us both preserve and develop the region - it is unspeakable! "
As for the suggestion by Moreira da Silva that he comes to the Algarve to explain the contracts that he authorised, Amarelinho said a visit may be useful only if the former minister wants apologise to the Algarve, particularly to foreigners living in the Algarve, "whom he has offended deeply."