The Government approved the two last diplomas that were missing from the Natura 2000 Network’s Special Conservation Zone (ZEC), under the Habitats Directive, for Serra da Estrela and Alvito/Cuba, it was announced today.
According to the Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, after the meeting of the Council of Ministers, the “regimes that designate the two last special conservation zones, ZEC, of the Natura 2000 Network” were approved.
“Portugal, two years ago, had 61 not approved and was in European infringement with fines” of “10 million euros, plus a daily sanction of 41 thousand euros, because we had not, for decades, created these environmental protection zones” across the country, he explained.
The official noted that, with the approval of the “two last that were missing, Serra da Estrela and Alvito/Cuba”, the executive has completed “legislatively this process”.
For a government source, the approval of the two ZEC completes “a process that had been dragging on for more than 30 years”, traversing 12 governments and which gave rise to “two condemnations of Portugal by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)”.
The first case and condemnation occurred in 2019, because the Portuguese State had not designated the 61 ZEC within the legal deadlines nor adopted the conservation measures required by the Habitats Directive.
As a consequence of maintaining that non-compliance, Portugal faced in November 2024 the risk of financial penalties that could “reach 100 million euros”, but the Ministry of Environment and Energy and the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF) managed to advance with the designation of the areas.
The CJEU, in March 2026, after more than half of the ZEC had been designated, again condemned the Portuguese State, imposing a fine of 10 million euros, in addition to a daily sanction of 41,250 euros, applied from the date of the ruling, with no retroactive effects, and with the amount progressively reduced as the obligations were fulfilled.
The approval of the two ZEC thus completes the designation and approval of the respective management and conservation instruments for the 61 areas covered by the infringement process, seen as a fundamental step to resolve a European dispute with “high financial and reputational costs”.
On the other hand, the Government’s decision creates conditions for the cessation of daily sanctions, after the full compliance with all obligations is confirmed, including the conservation measures required by European legislation.
Environment Minister Maria da Graça Carvalho, in September, stated in a communiqué that the government was “solving a problem of decades”, that it “allows overcoming a dispute with European institutions and, above all, ensures effective protection of biodiversity and of the natural values that justified the creation of these areas”.
The Serra da Estrela Site of Community Importance (SCI) lies within 97.8% of its area inside the Serra da Estrela Natural Park, with a total area of 88,535 hectares (ha).
The zone, fully included in the Centro region, comprises areas of the municipalities Celorico da Beira (10.8% of the ZEC’s total area), Covilhã (15.8%), Gouveia (17.4%), Guarda (16.7%), Manteigas (13.8%), Oliveira do Hospital (0.02%) and Seia (25.5%).
The SIC Alvito/Cuba, later classified as ZEC, is a discontinuous area, consisting of two geographically separated parcels, with the southern parcel located in the municipality of Cuba (136 ha) and the northern parcel in the municipalities of Alvito and Viana do Alentejo (786 ha).
The ZEC Alvito/Cuba is characterized by being situated in a territory with an essentially rural matrix, where agricultural land uses predominate; in the Cuba parcel there are annual crops for dryland and irrigated crops and irrigated olive cultivation, and in Alvito/Viana do Alentejo there is the exploitation of montados of cork oak and holm oak and pig farming under mountainous conditions.
The SCI and ZEC are part of the Natura 2000 Network, under the Habitats Directive, with the explicit objective to “contribute to ensuring biodiversity, through the conservation of natural habitats” and “the habitats of species of flora and wild fauna,” considered “threatened in the space of the European Union.”
