"The subject matter that has now been raised about a request for successive inspection of the constitutionality of norms of this parliament, a request signed by the former prime minister of Portugal, reveals that the country, and that some centralists of our country, continue to believe that our asset, the sea, that our autonomy, the will to defend what is ours, to value our potential in a national, community and global framework, continues to be a banner of autonomous defense", said José Manuel Bolieiro (PSD).

The president of the Azorean Government spoke this afternoon in the regional parliament, in Horta, on the second day of the debate on the Plan and Budget of the Regional Government (PSD/CDS-PP/PPM) for 2024, where the PAN deputy, Pedro Neves, addressed the issue.

"Today I would like, urged to make this intervention in this debate on medium-term guidelines and the Plan and Budget, to urge this parliament that, yes, it can do so: A protest and a censure of the initiative of this former prime minister regarding this matter, but also to promptly do the work that it owes", he said.

And he continued: "To defend the constitutionality of these legislative norms, to prepare the defense of this our prerogative and this our objective with the Constitutional Court".

"And if it is not sufficient within the framework of the current constitutional text to guarantee this right, this prerogative of the insular people that we are and of the Autonomous Region that we are, that it be done within the framework of the constitutional revision to clarify the constitutional norm, that doubts about this matter end", he admitted.

Bolieiro also said that, "unfortunately, in addition to this centralist attitude in the request for inspection", he also does not have "a good note in the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, which usually always interprets the powers and prerogatives of autonomy in the most restrictive way".

"And, therefore, I am not sure about what the conclusion of this process may be. And it is time for us to affirm this will to guarantee our rights and our prerogatives within the constitutional framework because the sea asset belongs to the Azores: it has influence and creates dimension for the country and for the European Union. And we do not give up our rights and prerogatives".

In conclusion, he reaffirmed the exhortation to the Azorean parliament to "make a good defense of the constitutionality" of the norms now questioned by the Republic.

The PS deputy and leader, Vasco Cordeiro, also spoke about the matter.

Although he has not yet had the opportunity to read the document "with due consideration", he stated that "there is no doubt about what the PS always thinks and believes", since the decrees in question were approved by the last PS Regional Government, which he presided over.

"That says it all, I think, about the profound, clear, unequivocal disagreement between what the PS Regional Government of the Azores thinks and believes about this matter and what, apparently, the former prime minister understands about this matter", he said.

"On this matter, we certainly do not agree with Dr. António Costa, as we have not agreed on other matters", assumed Vasco Cordeiro.

And he concluded: "If there were no other reasons, the fact that it is about decrees approved by the PS Regional Governments [which governed the region between 1996 and 2020] and by a Legislative Assembly in which the PS had the majority, says everything about the difference of understanding and the profound disagreement with this request for a declaration of unconstitutionality".

The social-democratic deputy and leader Bruto da Costa highlighted the fact that António Costa "waited until 8:33 pm on the last day of his duties to send a request for the unconstitutionality of regional norms to the Constitutional Court".

"Either it is underhanded, or it is to try (...) to mislead people, to make them think that it was another [prime minister] who did this joke", he said, regretting that "any prime minister, who on the last day of his duties, already at night, takes the trouble to have an attitude like this against the Autonomous Region of the Azores and against the Azoreans".

In the letter addressed to the president of the TC, to which the Lusa agency had access today, the former head of government alleges that the regional legislative decrees are unconstitutional due to "violation of the parliamentary law reserve" and because "state domain assets" are at stake.

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