At a time when the Government and social partners are meeting in Social Concertation to discuss the increase in the national minimum wage for 2025, André Ventura defended a sustained increase.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a visit to Tábua, a municipality affected by the fires that recently ravaged the central and northern regions of the country, André Ventura stressed that Chega intends to “bring the minimum wage closer to 1,000 euros”.

However, this increase must be accompanied by “a State support grant for companies whose liquidity would not allow them to do so in the first few years, ensuring that they would remain open and pay this wage”, he said.

“Therefore, it would be a supported minimum wage and not a merely stipulated minimum wage as the Government wants”, he said, admitting that this measure has a budgetary impact, but that he considers it more acceptable “so as not to force companies to close”, he clarified.

For André Ventura, an increase in the minimum wage “by decree is very nice, but many companies will not be able to pay it”.

“What happens? They close or start making a parallel payment circuit. That is the result, if there is no money to pay them”, he argued, justifying, on this basis, an increase in the minimum wage to 1,000 euros, “partially supported by the State”.

The Government and social partners meet again today in Social Concertation to discuss measures to increase wages, namely the increase in the national minimum wage for next year.

At the end of the last meeting, the Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security assured that the Government did not yet have "a proposal" for increasing the national minimum wage, and that "bilateral meetings" on the matter had been agreed upon until a next joint meeting.

According to the social partners interviewed by Lusa, in the bilateral meetings that have been taking place within the scope of the Social Concertation, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho opened the door to advancing with the exemption of contributions and taxes on productivity bonuses for performance, as provided for in the Government programme.

On the other hand, she reiterated her willingness to go further than what is foreseen in the income agreement on the national minimum wage for 2025, which foresees that the guaranteed minimum wage will increase to 855 euros, as well as to revise "incrementally" the benchmark for the overall increase in wages (discussed in collective bargaining).

Even so, according to the social partners interviewed by Lusa, the Government has not presented any formal proposal, with these possibilities having been transmitted verbally.