The Assembly of the Republic today unanimously approved the extension of the deadline by an additional 120 days for the reconsideration of the PS bill to revise the regime of rural property.
According to the Parliamentary Committee for Agriculture and Fisheries, the deadline for a new general consideration of Bill 205/XVII of the PS, for the revision of the rural property regime, was set to end on June 23, hence the MPs requested “an extension of the deadline by 120 more days.”
In the plenary vote, the deputies unanimously approved the request from the Parliamentary Committee for Agriculture and Fisheries.
A PS bill aims to “proceed with the revision of the rural property regime,” arguing that fragmentation “constitutes a serious constraint to the active management of territories, to their resilience and to the prevention of the most significant territorial risks, namely the risk of forest fires.”
In this regard, the Socialists argue that it is “necessary to strengthen the legal and fiscal mechanisms that encourage the resizing and concentration of rural property.”
The Socialist government, in 2021, established the Rural Property Working Group, composed of academic and technical experts, with the mission to develop “recommendations and action proposals aimed at promoting concentration and facilitating the management of rural properties.”
As a result of “a meticulous, detailed and technically sound work,” the working group presented three reports, between February 2022 and July 2023, with the diagnosis of the “constraints and challenges,” models of “solutions and concrete measures,” and proposals of “legislative drafts” and analysis of the legislative impact.
“All documents were delivered to the XXIV Constitutional Government in the transition portfolio in 2024, with the Government opting for inaction,” is stated in the bill’s justification.
According to the Socialists, the proposals “aim to counter the trend of high fragmentation of rural property, reduce the difficulties that arise in the management of this property and the inertia provided by the hereditary regime.”
The explicit provision for admissibility of renunciative abdication as a cause for the extinction of the property right over real estate, and the facilitation of the “processes of division of common property and of inventory, creating mechanisms that prevent fragmentation outside the applicable legal framework” are also proposed.
In the bill, there is also an aim “to introduce the need that, in all acts and legal transactions in which buildings are identified, the geometric configuration of the building that is the subject of the act or legal transaction be presented to the holder,” and in registrations, “the registrar shall visualize the respective geometric configuration.”
Although the proposals, by themselves, do not directly solve “the scourge of fires,” for the PS they are “essential to underpin the foundations of a territory that can be better managed and planned,” through a “structural and multisectoral reform.”
