Speaking to journalists after attending the briefing and meeting with the Civil Protection command in Carnaxide, Luís Montenegro was asked if he regretted not activating the European Civil Protection Mechanism sooner.
In his reply, the prime minister emphasised that this mechanism has “rules of operation” and the government followed, from an operational point of view, “the indications that were given to reconcile the national air resources system” and the need to reinforce it, stressing that there are other European countries, including in the north of the continent, that are also dealing with forest fires.
He emphasised that the assessment of the timing of the activation of the European Civil Protection Mechanism cannot depend on the discretion of the prime minister or the “hunch of any politician” – in an allusion to the PS secretary-general, José Luís Carneiro, who had suggested that the government activate it earlier – reiterating that it must obey “criteria of an operational nature and solidarity between all the partners”.
“We followed the technical and operational criteria. In the end, we’ll see if this has been properly used – my expectation is that it has – but we will be scrutinised as is normal in a democracy,” he stressed.
Luís Montenegro said that he will answer “to the Portuguese, to parliament” and will do so “openly, honestly and with a sense of responsibility”. “This is a fight for the country, we are at war and we have to win this war,” he said.
The prime minister also said that the government has been “preparing the whole process from the beginning” so that the situation of normality in the lives of all those affected can be restored, but emphasised that, at the moment, “absolute concentration on the fight” is necessary.
Confronted with statements he had made in 2022, when he had accused the government of the time of “distraction manoeuvres” by associating the difficulties in fighting the fires with climatic situations and not with a lack of prevention, the prime minister invited journalists to revisit the context of those statements and compare them with the current context.
“The current context is indeed one of unparalleled severity in the country. The assessment I was making on that occasion was an assessment after 2017 [the year of the Pedrógão Grande fires] and everything that followed the recovery work,” he said, although he emphasised that he didn’t want to be “fuelling that polemic”.
Platform with Lusa
