The parliamentary committee on Local Power validated an opinion according to which it will only analyze requests for the desegregation of parishes aggregated into 2013 that have been approved by the respective municipal assemblies until 21 December 2022. District of Beja's 10 parishes in a position to be analyzed.
At issue was a clarification of the deadline for 21 December 2022, established in the legal regime of creation, modification and extinction of parishes as the limit of a special mechanism to disaggregate parishes aggregated into 2013 who still want to separate, if they comply with the rules established by law.
The doubt was what would be the concrete step of the process that should be completed by that date and the now validated opinion followed the understanding that cases in which municipal assemblies have decided to accept the disaggregation of parishes will be analyzed by 21 December 2022, regardless of the date of entry of the request in the Assembly of the Republic.
This had already been the understanding of the previous working group on parishes, whose work was interrupted by the dissolution of parliament.
In 09 July, the coordinator of the current Working Group – parishes, the social democratic deputy Jorge Paulo Oliveira, pointed out that this decision excludes 31 disaggregation processes, that have municipal meeting dates later than 21 December 2022.
When the work of the previous group was completed, it had been received 182 processes, corresponding to almost 400 parishes, of which 25 were considered as not having met the deadline. After these 25, at least six others arrived during 2023, “at dates much later than the scheduled date”, but to invoke the transitional regime, such as parishes of Loures, Leiria, Lourinhã, Estremoz, Beja and Braga.
This working group must deliver the results of the analysis of the processes for ratification (or not) of the parliamentary committee on Local Government after 06 of December.
The group plans to make a decision on each of the requests at meetings scheduled for the first week of December, that will take place behind closed doors, because it is a theme “of some delicacy”.
The deputies had already decided, in 19 of September, assess whether the parishes that intend to desegregate meet the minimum population criteria for desegregation, taking into account the number of voters registered in 31 December 2022, since not all municipalities that submitted a desegregation request demonstrably demonstrated the number of voters.
Parishes that wish to desegregate must meet certain criteria, namely a minimum population rule, since the law requires that each parish to be desegregated must have at least 750 voters or 250 voters in the case of parishes in interior territories covered by special territorial cohesion measures.
At that meeting, Jorge Paulo Oliveira highlighted that it would be around 20 the parishes that did not meet this population criterion.
In 2013, Portugal reduced 1.168 parishes, of 4.260 for the current 3.092, by imposition of the ‘troika’ in 2012.
A new law for creation, modification or extinction of parishes, which entered into force on 21 December 2021, gave one year for the aggregated parishes to request the reversal of the process, through a special and simplified transitional mechanism.
According to the previous working group, Braga (31), Port (28) and Aveiro (21) are the districts with the most requests for desegregation, followed by Santarém and Viseu (12), Lisbon (11), Beja and Castelo Branco (10), Coimbra (new), Évora and Faro (eight), Watch, Leiria, Setúbal and Viana do Castelo (with four each), Portalegre (three), Vila Real (two) and Bragança (an).
In the district of Beja there were 100 parishes that were reduced to 75, and of these, 20 are parish unions, there are processes to be developed to reverse mergers, with half of them filing desegregation processes in the Assembly of the Republic:
Aljustrel (1): UF Aljustrel and Rio de Moinhos, Almodovar (2): UF Almodôvar and Graça dos Padrãos, UF Santa Clara-a-Nova e Gomes Aires, Castro Verde (1): UF Castro Verde and Casével, Ferreira do Alentejo (2): UF Alfundão and Peroguarda, UF Ferreira do Alentejo and Canhestros, Moura (1): UF Safara and Santo Aleixo da Restauração, Odemira (1): UF Bicos, Colos and Vale of Santiago, Ourique (1): UF Garvão and Santa Luzia and UF Panóias and Conceição and Serpa (1): UF Vila Nova de São Bento and Vale de Vargo.
After ratification of processes that comply with the rules and can, so, disintegrate, the parties will have, no parliament, a deadline to present legislative proposals to complete this unbundling, based on a draft bill that will facilitate the process.
News: Lidador News / Up-to-the-minute news
