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The government expects to submit the State Budget to parliament in the beginning of February. Brussels said it demands a deficit below 2.8% and the German bank Commerzbank predicts Portugal will find itself in the same situation as Greece. The leftist parties warn that the Budget will have to mirror the agreement they struck with the government.

With 99.4% of the votes counted, Marisa Matias obtained 10.12% of voter support and was the third most voted candidate.

We need to stop taxpayers’ money acting as a guarantee that mismanagement in private banking is a crime that pays. By Mariana Mortágua.

Presidential candidate Maria de Belém was one of thirty MPs from the PS and the PSD who asked to keep the privilege of life-long subventions for former MPs. Supporters of Sampaio da Nóvoa and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa are also on the list.

The plan imposed by the European Commission, with the intervention from the Bank of Portugal and governmental approval, had a clear goal: to benefit Santander. By Francisco Louçã.

This week civil servant trade unions met with government to demand restitution of cuts made by the previous right-wing government.

A parliamentary motion on condemning political oppression in Angola, presented by the Left Bloc was rejected by votes from the PCP, PSD and CDS, together with abstentions from the PS. Motions on condemning nuclear tests by North Korea, put forward by the Left Bloc, the PSD and CDS, were also approved.

Santander bank has benefitted from a solution imposed by the ECB and the Bank of Portugal over an offer from the North American Apollo Fund which would have saved the state 1.7bn.

The Left Bloc's vote of condolence pays homage to Sêvê Demir, Pakize Nayir and Fatma Uyar, feminists and Kurdish movement activists who were killed by the Turkish regime.

Parliament discussed a proposal presented by the Left Bloc banning tax authorities from selling homes of families with tax debts. A Socialist Party law on the same subject, which goes beyond what was originally written in the government programme, was also voted.

The party voted against the proposed balanced budget amendment presented by the Minister of Finance, along with the Communist Party (PCP) and the Greens (PEV), signatories of the agreement which enabled this government. The proposal was only approved due to the abstention of PSD.

“Get them out of there” was the message from a country tired of being misled and unable to take any more poverty. And we have answered that message. By Catarina Martins.

 With the election of its former coordinator, for the first time Left Bloc has a representative on the advisory board to the President of the Republic. Domingos Abrantes is also the first representative of the Communist Party on this board since 2006. This is another consequence of the agreement with the left.

Marisa Matias presented this Thursday, at the Constitutional Court of Lisbon, 12,000 signed nominations to formalise her presidential candidacy.