Lisbon City Hall wants to set aside 40.9% of its 2022 Budget for "a sustainable city". Budget proposal was presented this Wednesday by the executive of Carlos Moedas. It will now have to be discussed with the opposition.
This Wednesday, January 5, Carlos Moedas' government presented journalists with the broad outlines of its proposal for the 2022 municipal budget. Filipe Anacoreta Correia, Deputy Mayor of Lisbon, was given the task of presenting the document, which comes with some delay as it is usually unveiled and discussed during the previous year. This budget proposal, he said, "it doesn't yet reflect all the changes we want" but it's a "first step", looking for "reconciling the legacy of the past executive with change" that Carlos Moedas' executive wants for the city.
The 2022 budget proposal is not yet known in detailIt will only be published in its formal form after it has been discussed by all the councillors of the City Council (CML), including the opposition, and then discussed and considered by the Municipal Assembly. For now, journalists and the general public have been shown the general lines of the budget, which Moedas' team has divided into six different action axes, including a "sustainable city" axis that will account for 40.9% of the budget cake.
When it comes to mobility, Moedas is looking to invest 25% more than Medina spent in 2021: i.e. for "diversifying mobility"The executive proposes 102.7 million euros. In 2021, 82 million had been budgeted. Filipe Anacoreta Correia didn't detail what these 102.7 million will be used for, but he did put forward two measures that were already included in the electoral program and that the executive intends to implement this year a free public transport for the young and old and the EMEL cheaper for residents.
Free transport for young and old
Let's break it down. For public transport, the the executive's proposal is for Lisbon City Council to bear the cost of the Navegante monthly passes itself to people over 65, young people aged between 13 and 18 and students living in Lisbon up to the age of 23. CML intends to "pay" the Navegante passes to Transportes Metropolitanos de Lisboa (TML), the entity responsible for managing Navegante. Anacoreta Correia admitted that the proposal is still under negotiation with TML and "may still deserve some sort of adjustments".
In detail, how could this gratuity come about?
- people over 65, who currently benefit from the "Navegante 65+" pass at €20/month, could now have this pass at zero euros with the executive's proposal;
- The "Navegante 12" pass, which currently offers unlimited travel to children up to the age of 12, could be extended to all young people up to and including the age of 18 who live in Lisbon;
- for young people between the ages of 19 and 23, free public transport may only be valid for students in the city. Today they pay €30/month.
The Moedas government's intention is to make public transport free of charge in 2022, with a 12 million budget allocated to this measureFilipe Anacoreta Correia said it was essential for the decarbonization of the city. The Moedas executive is confident in the negotiations with TML, but may have a "plan B" in case something goes wrong - to resort to free services only for Carris, the operator that is municipalized. In this case, the "The impact of the measure would have a much lower budgetary impact, but the City Council's commitment is to make it possible to implement this measure through the TML". "We believe there are conditions for its implementation this year"said the CML Vice-President.
However, Anacoreta Correia admitted that the measure could be applied gradually by "technical issues"It will also be applied, for example, to the elderly, since there is only one pass dedicated to this age group. It should be noted that the proposal for free public transport will cover Carris and the other bus operators, Metro de Lisboa, CP and Fertagus, and will only apply to the Navegante pass - other transport tickets, such as single tickets or the zappingwill continue to be paid for. For TML or the transport operators, this proposal will not represent a loss of revenue, since part of the 12 million will be used to offset the value that people would give for the pass.
EMEL cheaper for residents
For the parking lot, the Moedas executive remains determined to give a 50% discount on EMEL tariffs to the city's residents, an investment that for the municipality and EMEL will be of 2.5 million euros. This discount has already been criticized by could go against the modal targets the city has committed to by 2030 and it could be a tricky subject for the opposition - both in the City Council and the Municipal Assembly, the left-wing majority may not take kindly to this measure.
More measures are not yet known. Filipe Anacoreta Correia, Deputy Mayor of Lisbon, also said that in the last four years as a whole, CML's expenditure has exceeded its income, that the financial reserve that the municipality had set aside was consensually spent on measures to support the pandemic and that, without committing to "certain accounts" at the end of the mandate, the executive will seek to "making an effort to compromise between what CML's responses are as an engine of economic and social life in the city and at the same time what its financial health demands". In other words, the executive will try to have more income than expenditure, but will look at what is needed in the city and not hold back on spending if it is really necessary. The council hopes, however, that it will be able to raise new forms of revenue - today the biggest slice comes from taxes such as IMT and IMI. In the 2022 budget proposal, Lisbon City Council is forecasting revenue of 1.028 billion euros and expenditure of 1.160 billion.
With a moderate and measured speech, not least because the approval of the budget will be sensitive from a political point of view, Anacoreta Correia highlighted efforts to converge with the opposition: he said that meetings had been held with all the parties, a process that began on December 9 with the PS. He sought to "listen to the aspirations of the other political forces" and stressed that the budget proposal now presented "does not exhaust" the convergence sought. "We remain committed to listening"he said, adding that he believes this "it's the right budget". The budget proposal will now have to be considered by the entire City Council executive and approved by the Lisbon Municipal Assembly.
