The Left Bloc proposal to abolish tolls on the Algarve’s Via do Infante motorway was defeated in today’s vote in the Budget and finance Committee.
The Bloquistas put forward 30 amendments to the 2016 State Budget but the tolls issue was voted out by the Socialist Party and the CDS People’s Party, with the Social Democrats abstaining.
The Left Bloc said this was but the first battle in the war that it is waging against the Via do Infante tolls, a war that precedes the current Socialist government. It has the support of the Communists but the next vote on the tolls resulting from a bill presented last December has yet to be scheduled.
The fiercely anti-tolls Algarve Left Bloc MP, João Vasconcelos, (pictured above) today presented 'ten good reasons to scrap the tolls' but said he was not greatly surprised by the Socialists voting out the amendment, "It was more or less expected. We knew the position of the Socialist Party which is in favour of a reduction in toll fees," said Vasconcelos in an interview with Sul Informação.
António Eusébio, an Algarvian Socialist MP, said that for his party “the idea is initially to decrease the cost of the tolls, in order to progress towards their abolition.”
Vasconcelos did point out a new twist, the "the unnatural alliance" formed in the vote between the Socialists and the CDS-People’s Party - led until yesterday by Paulo Portas.
Now, said the Left Bloc MP, "the struggle continues" and the next event will be the vote of the December bill, which "will be scheduled as soon as the State Budget discussions are over."
In pre-election campaigning, the Socialists promise to reduce the toll fees by up to 50% but has yet to put this to the vote.
The previous coalition partners in government refused to abolish the tolls but the Algarve Social Democrats since have veered from the party line and now are 'anti-toll' and have registered their concern about "the delay that have occurred in the work on the EN125, which allows us to predict a completion date way beyond this summer, causing huge losses to the local economy."
One delay noted is the Lagoa to Portimão section of the EN125 which recently has been taking about an hour to travel 10 kilometres, “this will have a very negative effect on the Algarve’s tourism because of the huge delays it’s causing to the movement of people and goods."
João Vasconcelos remains convinced that a proper independent report analysing the costs vs benefits of the toll scheme is essential in showing that the system costs far more to the local economy than it raises for the Treasury.
More importantly, the public is not allowed to know the secret clauses in the toll contracts which could explain why successive governments have resisted taking action to have the tolls scheme scrapped as costing more than they raise.
