1. The power outage in Portugal on April 28, due to the disruption, costs and impacts it caused, calls for measures to contribute to the rapid restoration of supply - prioritising essential services to the population, including health services, civil protection, security, transport, education, communications, water supply and social care - and to support and aid the population, as well as a rigorous investigation into the causes of the outage and the identification of options to guarantee Portugal's energy security and sovereignty in the future.
The situation also demands a rapid assessment of the resulting impacts and damage, as well as measures to repair the damage and support the sectors affected.
2. This incident - like others that have already taken place in this century – lays bare the vulnerabilities and problems of the National Electricity System in terms of sovereignty, security, production, distribution and respective management and control, which are inseparable from privatisation and liberalisation policies, with a strong impact on a sector that has also been the victim of segmentation, with the separation of production, distribution and commercialisation, with the emergence of a multiplicity of operators.
Faced with this situation, we need to re-evaluate the market mechanisms and the degree of dependence and interconnection with third countries (particularly Spain), as well as the Country’s effective capacity to respond to energy supply needs in emergency situations such as this in the various regions of the Country. The exceptional situation of full reservoirs with practically maximum hydroelectric production capacity cannot minimise this assessment, especially when thermoelectric production coinciding with long periods of drought has been shut down.
3. Being subjected to a context of external dependence and a liberalised market - in which the main players are private economic groups and in which operations are segmented - is a factor of insecurity for the Country. All this calls for a reversal of the policy of national abdication over strategic sectors and the guarantee of an articulated, coherent and efficient operation of the National Electricity System. It is no coincidence that other European countries have recently decided on measures aimed at recovering total or partial public control of this sector, as happened in France and Germany. Portugal must also assume this objective.
4. The PCP will table an urgent debate on this issue at the leaders' conference in the Assembly of the Republic.
