Government brings in ‘single social benefit’ from August – Portugal Resident

The PSU (single social benefit) is being brought in by August this year, largely because not bringing it in could see Portugal lose €500 million from the European PRR (Plan for Recovery and Resilience).

Presenting it today in yet another press conference precluding questions from journalists, prime minister Luís Montenegro left it to his Minister for Labour, Solidarity and Social Security to explain the nitty gritty.

The new mechanism, which brings together 13 social benefits, including the RSI (social insertion income), has a component to “incentivise work”, said minister Rosário Palma, so that it is not “financially more advantageous to remain unemployed.”

Beneficiaries will have to perform “up to 15 hours a week” in community work, as long as they are of working age, and not employed, she said.

The plan – approved during today’s Council of Ministers, and now destined for debate in parliament – still appears fairly light on ‘what kind of community work’ people will be expected to perform. Minister Palma referred to work in the ‘area of solidarity, social economy, civil protection and with local authorities’.

“The logic here being that those who receive a benefit, such as the PSU, should also contribute to their community, even to promote integration,” she added.

Excluded from community work will be people with disabilities, pensioners with disabilities, students and ‘informal caregivers’. 

On the basis that the PSU is designed to encourage people to return to a life where they work, and receive a salary, the idea is that as people ‘return to work’, “the first incomes will not mean a deduction of the PSU value” (…) For subsequent incomes it is expected that PSU income value will “only be deducted as a percentage, and cannot exceed the limit of 50%”.

The government has no estimates for the cost of this measure, said the minister.

Non-EU migrants will have to have been resident in this country for a year before they can qualify for PSU – and beyond the necessity to perform 15 hours per week of community work, beneficiaries will also have to agree to signing-on at their local job centre, show that they are actively seeking employment, and/ or commit to signing up for professional training.

In the words of the prime minister, before he left the floor to Minister Palma, this is a “structural reform that the country has been waiting for for a long time”, conceived with the intention of social justice. The only people who will lose benefits, will be those “who are prevaricating”, he said.

And to ensure there is no fraud at play, the government is creating a “complaints channel”, with a specific team to evaluate cases.

Source material: CNN Portugal/ Expresso