PRESIDENT ENACTS NEW RULES FOR PROMOTIONS AND SALES

The aim is to ensure that sales are lower than the values at which the product was sold in the last three months.

In a note published on the official website of the Presidency, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa enacted the law that "simplifies and harmonizes the procedures that traders must follow whenever they communicate to the Food and Economic Safety Authority that they intend to sell on sale or in liquidation".

This diploma was approved in mid-June by the Council of Ministers and was one of the seven Government documents that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa enacted today. To these are added another law of the National Parliament, which also received the approval of the head of State.

At a press conference at the time, the Deputy Minister of Economy, Pedro Siza Vieira, explained that "when making sales or promotions you must offer a discount in relation to the lowest price previously practiced” and, with this decree-law and by defining what is the "lowest price previously practiced”, it seeks to clarify and avoid the price increase immediately before sales or promotions and then to lower them. 

The "lowest price previously practiced” is the "lowest price practiced in the previous 90 days, with the exception of previous sales and promotions”, defined the minister.

This is a measure of transparency and clarification and has been negotiated with consumer and traders associations.

Another of the diplomas enacted today by the President of the Republic "changes the governance model and the general rules for the application of the European structural and investment funds”.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also enacted "complementary rules to the reader’s transition regime foreseen in the University Teaching Career Statute”, as well as an amendment to the "regulatory mechanism to guarantee the balance of the competition in the wholesale electricity market in Portugal”.

"Taking into consideration the favorable opinion of the Mutual Agricultural Credit Guarantee Fund, the President of the Republic enacted the diploma that transfers the deposit guarantee aspect of the Mutual Agricultural Credit Guarantee Fund to the Deposits Guarantee Fund”, adds the Presidency note.

Last week, the Government approved, in Council of Ministers, the transfer of the guarantee of the deposits of the Mutual Agricultural Credit Guarantee Fund to the Deposit Guarantee Fund of the banking sector. 

According to the statement of the Council of Ministers, with the approval of the decree law, the Deposit Guarantee Fund now "concentrates the deposit guarantee function of the Portuguese banking system", considering that a single national deposit guarantee system "allows for greater mutualisation of the risks of the sector and a homogeneous deposit protection, which translates into an increased system efficiency."

The diploma of the National Parliament "embraces the provisions of the Council of Europe Convention against Trafficking of Human Organs, amending the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure".

This law seeks to empower, in the criminal law, the crime of illicit extraction of human organs, following the Council of Europe's provisions to combat trafficking, and creating "an autonomous crime of illegal extraction of human organs", in other words, outside the national system of transplantation.