Portugal Votes to End Advance Audits for Contracts Below €7.5m

Portugal's parliament voted on 21 October to overhaul the Court of Auditors, moving the ordinary threshold for mandatory advance clearance of public contracts to €7.5 million and shifting more scrutiny to audits during and after spending. The vote changes the proposed legal framework for reviewing public contracts, but parliamentary passage should not be confused with proof that the law has already entered into force.

The government's published account of the vote says contracts exceeding €950,000 will still have to be notified to the court, even where they no longer require advance approval. It describes the change as a way to concentrate the court's resources on higher-value decisions while expanding scrutiny during contract implementation and afterward. The threshold concerns a procedural control, not a licence to bypass procurement law or an exemption from later audits.

Portuguese financial newspaper ECO independently reported the final parliamentary vote and the €7.5 million threshold. It also described a separate mechanism under which certain entities with accredited internal controls could be exempted from advance clearance, subject to an assessment involving the Inspectorate-General of Finance. The revised framework divides the court's work into advance control, audit, and financial-liability functions.

The government argues that moving away from broad pre-clearance will accelerate investment decisions and allow auditors to examine how contracts perform. The countervailing concern is whether expanded later-stage audits will have sufficient staff, access to records and enforcement capacity to identify problems after commitments have been made. Neither the vote nor the new threshold establishes that any particular contract is improper.

The law's final promulgation, publication and commencement date still require confirmation against the official gazette. TFNOS has not established the number or value of contracts that would cease to need advance clearance, and no defensible savings or corruption estimate can be derived from the €7.5 million threshold alone. Those figures will depend on contract-level data, implementation rules and the court's subsequent reporting.