In a statement, PRO.VAR - National Restaurant Association - Association for the Defense, Promotion and Innovation of Restaurants in Portugal "recognises the Government's effort and effective communication in managing the power outage that affected the country", but highlights that "the impact on the restaurant sector was very serious".

According to the association, the sector recorded the "loss of large quantities of perishable products, such as meat, seafood, fresh fish and frozen cod, which deteriorated due to a lack of energy", in addition to "a significant drop in revenue".

"Given the gravity of the situation", PRO.VAR advocates "the urgent creation of an emergency fund, with the following conditions: compensation corresponding to the average value of a week's purchases of perishable goods, based on the average monthly value of purchases in the month prior to the blackout".

It must also include "compensation equivalent to 20% of the value of the actual loss of revenue recorded by the affected establishments during the blackout period".

PRO.VAR advocates that this support be made available through a quick, simple process based on available accounting data, in order to ensure that companies can overcome this difficulty, in a sector that is already extremely fragile, as it has not yet recovered from the strong impact of Covid-19.