The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, will be listening today to the IL, Chega, PEV, PAN, CDS-PP and the PCP parties on the renewal of the state of emergency. Tomorrow it will be the turn of the BE, PSD and PS parties and, a day later, the parliament will meet to debate and approve the probable renewal of the state of emergency, which will take effect between 2 and 16 March. The current period ends at 23:59 on 1 March.

To declare a state of emergency, the President of the Republic must listen to the Government and have authorisation from the Assembly of the Republic, which in the last three renewals was given with votes in favor from PS, PSD, CDS-PP and PAN, BE abstaining and votes against by PCP, ENP, Chega and Liberal Initiative.

According to the Constitution, the legal framework that allows the suspension of the exercise of certain rights, freedoms and guarantees cannot last more than fifteen days, without prejudice to any renewals with the same time limit.

On Monday, during the meeting with epidemiologists, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa highlighted the "window of hope" regarding vaccination against covid-19 in the second quarter of this year.