Social protection expenditure tends to rise with economic downturns and in Portugal the experience of the recent crisis has highlighted the need to improve the efficiency of social protection provision and to make it more cost effective.

Host Country : Portugal

Place and date : Lisbon, 29. - 30.11.2011

Peer countries : Belgium - Croatia - Italy - Latvia - Lithuania - Malta - Romania - Slovenia

Stakeholders : Caritas, Eurocities

Two decrees in June 2010 resulted in the implementation of the following measures:

• Redefining the means-tested eligibility criteria for access to social support to ensure consistency in the allocation of non-contributory benefits (namely social assistance, child benefits, and unemployment benefit);

• The clarification of three key concepts (the concept of household, what constitutes total income, and the equivalence scale to apply to individuals in households in order to take account of economies of scale in expenditure) which will serve to ensure that benefits provided correspond to the target groups without over- or under-counting the numbers concerned;

• More help to those needing to acquire new skills or qualifications conditional on them showing a high level of commitment to the programmes involved

• Enforcement measures to fight fraud and improve supervision of the system more generally.

 The Peer Review is designed to gather expertise on measures to improve the efficiency of social protection strategies and to evaluate the measures Portugal has taken.

Peer Review manager

Ms Renate Haupfleisch (ÖSB Consulting GmbH)