As the 2016 State Budget debate concluded today in the Portuguese parliament, minutes of the special meeting in Brussels on February 5th reveal those euro ministers who thought the budget should be rejected.
Several commissioners of the executive led by Jean-Claude Juncker wanted to kick the budget back to the Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa which finally was approved amid much back-slapping.
Two endangered Iberian lynx have been found dead on roads in the last week in the southern province of Jaén.
Environmental officials in Andalusia reported that a female lynx was found on Monday on a road while another female had been killed by a vehicle five days earlier.
The chocolate producer Mars has ordered a massive recall of Mars, Snickers and Milky Way bars after plastic was found in a product.
The recall hits most countries of Europe, including Spain, France, Italy and the UK.
TAP mastermind David Neeleman said that from March the airline will schedule 18 flights a day from Oporto’s Francisco Sá Carneiro airport, double the frequency from before he and Humberto Pedrosa gained control of the State owned company.
Neeleman claimed that "Oporto is a very important city for TAP," despite fierce local criticism that TAP has cancelled routes to and from the city.
The former head of Novo Banco, Vítor Bento, ‘let go’ for wishing to delay the bank’s sale until conditions improved, has said that one option for the bailed out bank it nationalisation.
Vítor Bento and the Bank of Portugal’s governor Carlos Costa did not see eye to eye over the timing of the sale of Novo Banco so he was replaced by Stock da Cunha at the helm of the ‘good bank’ that emerged from Costa’s disastrous solution to the BES collapse.
Olive oil is expected to be in shorter supply this year, forcing up prices.
The industry has been hit hard by poor harvests in some countries, the drought in Spain and the spread of Xylella fastidiosa bacteria in Italy where more than one million trees so far have been infected.
Portugal’s banks have been raising customer account fees to offset the revenue shortfall incurred since the EU limited ATM fee charges.
Having a bank account now cost, in round terms, about €100. Add to this the annual fees charged for credit and debit cards, cheques and interbank transfers carried out in branches, the cost of banking for Portugal’s account holders has never been higher.
The day before an open debate was held in Silves on the future of its Cork Museum and Fábrica do Inglês, a request for their classification as ‘property of national interest’ was sent to the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage.
The eight hour debate last Saturday at the Teatro Mascarenhas Gregório in Silves produced no result despite the intent to define the solution to the reopening of the museum and site.
