In the fortnightly debate in the Assembly of the Republic, the PSD parliamentary leader, Hugo Soares, questioned Luís Montenegro about the topic and ended up announcing a press conference for Thursday in which the party will present “a fair and balanced initiative” to correct access of foreigners to the SNS, “without the country failing those who truly need it”.

“We have a problem in Portugal, effectively, in access to our health units, to the National Health Service, with some foreign citizens looking for an answer that the Portuguese State guarantees in good faith, by virtue of organised networks and, therefore, with underlying principles of fraud, to take advantage of the humanism of our laws”, the prime minister admitted.

Montenegro assured that “health care will never be denied to a human being in difficulty” nor will assistance be refused to both national citizens and foreigners who work or are integrated in Portugal.

“But we will have to effectively have mechanisms to combat abuse and fraud that are proven to be related to international networks that seek to take advantage of these principles”, he defended.