Antonio Costa highlights the “great political consensus” on the tender for the construction of the first section of the high-speed line

Outgoing Prime Minister António Costa spoke this Friday at the opening of the tender for the construction of the first section of the high-speed rail line between Porto and Lisbon.

António Costa highlighted the “long journey” that had been made and the “great political consensus” around the competition, highlighting that only Chega abstained and no one voted against, “a sign of the great maturity of our democracy.”

“This project is consistent with the vision of a territory that is externally competitive and internally more cohesive,” he explained. The “principal option for the country” described by the head of government represents the culmination of “many years” of investment in the railway.”

In the final part of his speech, the Prime Minister said that in 1995, when the government of António Guterres was formed, he wanted to become Secretary of State for Transport, but ended up becoming Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs.

In a “very crooked path”, as a result of Operation Influencer and the sacking of João Galamba as infrastructure minister last November, it has now ended and the chief executive oversees the infrastructure portfolio.

Regarding the current leader of the PS, António Costa argued that “he was, in fact, the great initiator of the construction of the National Railway Plan and the vision of the railway as a potentially major cluster of the national economy.”

On Thursday, Parliament approved in a final vote the PS’s recommendation to the government to begin work with the TGV “before the deadline for applications for the Connecting Europe Fund” on January 30. At stake is some 730 million euros allocated exclusively to Portugal from public funds if the executive meets the minimum political conditions for a successful candidacy in Brussels.