Between 2010 and 2015 Portugal suffered one of the worst economic crises in its history. The economic collapse and intervention of the Troika in 2011 led to a long period of austerity and misery: unemployment exceeded 17%, the tax burden skyrocketed, and more than 500,000 Portuguese were forced to emigrate.
Today the neighboring country is in a much better situation. The tourism and real estate boom has facilitated a timid economic recovery , which has come accompanied by the cleaning of public accounts, a relaxation of taxes, and the collapse of unemployment, which currently stands at around 6%.
With the crisis overcome, the Executive of the socialist António Costa now tries to recover the Russians who fled poverty, and to this end the Regresar Program has been launched , which offers tax assistance to those who emigrated before 2016 and are willing to «return to home".
Those who return during the next two years may benefit from a 50% discount on personal income tax for a period of five years, and each family that returns with a signed employment contract will be offered up to 6,536 euros to facilitate reintegration in the neighboring country .
The return, free
In addition to these measures, the Executive plans to cover the transport costs of return trips and enable special credit lines for emigrants who want to make investments in Portugal.
Although the program is part of an electoral promise of Costa, who took office in 2015 promising to reverse the impact of austerity, it is also related to the fight against the demographic crisis in the neighboring country, one of the oldest and less populated in the EU.
Although the initiative has generated a lot of interest, for the moment the Portuguese emigrants have been little convinced by their incentives.
"I think it's good to try to recover the people who emigrated through the Troika, but there is a lack of vision, " says João Pedro Viana, who emigrated to London, where he is now a marketing executive in the music industry. "Even with discounts, taxes in Portugal are very high compared to those in the rest of Europe."
Viana affirms that the tax burden on Portuguese lands makes it impossible for her to return and that of many other emigrants. «If a hard Brexit takes place I will go to another European city; To return is to accept that the State drown you with taxes sooner or later.
Salaries, the key
Viana's perspective is shared by the brothers Vasco and Diogo Medina de Sousa, based in Amsterdam and Madrid, respectively. "The Portuguese salaries cannot compete with those in northern Europe," says Vasco, logistics coordinator at a multinational, referring to the average salary of 880 euros in Portugal. «The national economy is not relevant and professional opportunities are lacking. Perhaps if they offered tax incentives for multinationals or local companies, they would settle there and create a more attractive scenario.
"We all aspire to return home at some point, but it makes no sense to do so now to live in worse conditions," adds Diogo, who works in the pharmaceutical industry in Madrid. «A priori, the initiative seems unfair. I don't understand why those who left and those who stayed and endured the worst are rewarded.
Although the Regressar Program does not seem to have sufficiently interesting incentives to attract the majority, some who already had the return underway are more than willing to enjoy the benefits it offers. Such is the case of soccer player Pepe who, after years playing for Real Madrid and Turkish Bekiktas, has returned to Portugal to join FC Porto. According to O Jogo, the defense has benefited from the program of returnees to save half of the taxes to which his millionaire contract would be subject for five years.
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