“The Prime Minister of Portugal wants the Portuguese to get used to poverty, but we are not going to get used to it”, said the leader of the Social Democrats, who was speaking at the inauguration of the Beja PSD District.

Luís Montenegro alluded to António Costa's interview published last week in the magazine Visão, in which the prime minister warned the parties to get used to the absolute majority of the Socialist Party (PS).

In the speech, the PSD leader spoke of the poverty numbers in Portugal, asserting that "half of the population is either already at risk of poverty or is just not because the State gives them benefits that prevents them from being on that statistical threshold".

“Because it is [a threshold] that is only statistical because on a day-to-day basis they are still poor”, he argued.

And when the PSD, as an opposition, confronts the Government about this “impoverishment” of the country, “what does the Prime Minister have to say to the country? Get used to it. This is what he has to say to the country, get used to it”, said Luís Montenegro.

“On the contrary, he is going to have to get used to having a demanding, firm, vigilant, scrutinising, supervisory opposition”.

And “don’t tell us that this is the result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, because there was also a pandemic in the rest of the countries of Europe and there are effects of the war in all countries in Europe, in fact, there are several countries that have much worse effects of the war than we have in Portugal”, but they have economic growth, he argued.