Portugal’s government generously has offered to share the management of former state airline TAP which it intends to renationalise.
The Gateway consortium, owned by Humberto Pedrosa and David Neeleman, purchased 61% of the almost bankrupt carrier in a deal that involved a small payment of €10 million to the Treasury and an undertaking to recapitalise the business.
This headline will come as no surprise to the public with ‘problems,’ according to the auditors, being blamed as much on lack of local controls and management weakness, as the farmers who have been fiddling grant applications.
The European Court of Auditors considers that an astonishing 75% of the audited projects that had been financed under the scheme for agricultural investments ‘to improve the environment’ largely have been a waste of money, with plenty of examples coming from Portugal.
Portuguese Economy Minister, Manuel Caldeira Cabral, said some of his country’s banks might need more capital and he’d welcome foreign investment.
“There are specific cases where reinforcement is positive, but I don’t think there is a widespread problem with Portuguese banks,” Cabral said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Jonathan Ferro at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
France will continue to protect wine lovers by replanting its vast gene pool of half the grape varieties in the world.
Its initial effort to preserve global wine diversity for the future began in the mid-1800s as a result of the devastating Phylloxera epidemic which decimated French vineyards.
As Spaniards continue to wonder what their government will look like, Podemos has finally made a proposal which would shut the door on the conservatives.
Its leader, Pablo Iglesias, said that he had informed King Felipe VI of the party’s “desire to form a government of change with the Socialists and United Left”.
Officers of the Judicial Police have raided restaurants in Faro, Lisbon and Oporto whose owners were suspected of using computer software that allows them to fiddle the VAT.
Some 18 restaurants were targeted for their involvement in the fraud after an investigation by the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DCIAP) raised suspicion that computers had been fitted with a programme that allows owners to enter amounts and print receipts which were not automatically transmitted to the tax authority via the offical terminals linked to the tills.
With the row over doctors’ hours continuing, the president of the Algarve’s hospitals management team, Dr Pedro Nunes has said he is leaving "in a matter of days."
Recent sharp criticism from Jaime Mendes of the Medical Council, Southern Region, included comments in a speech to a group of trainee doctors that they can expect to work an illegal number hours and face problems if they do not agree to do so.
António Costa's Socialist Party government has at last put forward its 2016 state budget that plans for a deficit reduction to 2.6% of GDP, slightly under the previous coalition administration’s target of 2.8%.
This should gain the approval of Brussels but the European Commission will want to know the detail of how Costa intends to achieve this seemingly miraculous task as his relaxation of austerity measures already has pointed to an increase in government spending.
