This Monday the prime-minister criticized the PSD political party for jeopardizing the development of Montijo airport, warning that "there is no plan B" and that the suspension of this project seriously putting economic growth at risk.
This position was conveyed by Costa at the end of a luncheon with the Portuguese Tourism Confederation in Lisbon, in a 36-minute long speech.
According to the prime-minister, after decades of impasse, it should be clear that there can be no "hesitations" in regards to this project.
"There is no Plan B now. Any other solution would very strongly jeopardize the growth dynamics of Portuguese tourism. We have to maintain a line of work that does not return the country to an uncertainty of what will happen next," he said.
Costa considered it essential that the political consensus reached in Parliament not be broken in order to create a new plan for the Montijo airport in Lisbon". "More hesitation would be a very serious threat to the continuity of the country's tourism activity and to the growth of this sector, which is fundamental for generating jobs, wealth and for boosting a whole set of other economic activities," he expressed in a warning tone.
Before the members of the Portuguese Tourism Confederation, the Prime Minister stressed that he has always insisted on the "essential nature of having consensually defined public investment programs, discussed and approved by the Assembly of the Republic with at least a two-thirds majority".
"It was necessary to put an end to an excessive 20-year cycle in which every incoming government started from scratch and called into question everything the previous executive had done,” he stated.
"Now is the time to make decisions and take action. The environmental impact study is clear about the measures to be taken to limit environmental impacts, to go back to square one and reopen the debate on the solution would be to seriously compromise the future of the country. I hope stability is possible in these decisions that have been made,” he concluded.
