Carlos Moedas at the ICPT

“How we’re serving Lisbon” is the theme of guest speaker, the Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas at the International Club of Portugal (ICPT) on 24 January.

But what will he say in his speech at the lunch which will be held at the Marriott Hotel? We don’t have a crystal ball … well maybe we do and we can have a pretty good idea that he will outline what he and his team have achieved so far in his mandate since he won the elections in late September 2021.
The engineer, economist, PS party politician and ex-EU Commissioner has actually achieved a fair bit for the city, despite operating in an overtly PS party socialist environment at city hall.
In his electoral shopping list of promises he has so far ticked off the streamlining of planning applications for real estate projects in the municipality (he was the horse that had the backing of the real estate sector lobby in Lisbon).
He’s been nice to people over 65 as well, giving pensioners free travel throughout the city (as well as students under 23), and has been ploughing through the 12-point programme of measures that he wanted to achieve in the first year, and has largely risen to the challenge.
Carlos Moedas has achieved the setting up of a Unicorn Factory in Lisbon which is already attracting attention from international as well as national startups, he has been taking a leaf out of Oeiras Mayor Isaltino Morais’ playbook by doing weekly walkabouts around different neighbourhoods and listening to the problems from the locals and guaranteeing that if the problems can be fixed, they will be and explaining why if they can’t.
“Every Friday I travel alone by bus, I talk to people on the bus, and they tell you things that you wouldn’t know otherwise. I listen to people’s problems, take notes and if we can’t sort the issues out, we explain why”, he has said recently.
The Mayor has got rid of the political billboards that ringed the Marquês de Pombal’s roundabout at virtually all times of the year.
Another achievement was using non-drinkable water to water gardens and for street cleaning in the Parque das Nações area of the city. “It is less expensive and promotes active recycling”, he has said.
In his first year, Carlos Moedas handed out 479 keys to council houses under the “Affordable Rents Programme” and “Assisted Rental Programme” with 417 homes attributed. His predecessor Fernando Medina (now the Minister of Finance) did do better with 741 though.
Moreover, Gebalis, the public company that develops and manages municipal housing got €40 million to do up around 800 properties earmarked for social housing for the needy that were either empty, run down or dilapidated. They’ll be ready by 2024.
There are lots of other things he’s done for the communities that make up Lisbon’s neighbourhoods, but I won’t gaze into the crystal any further to reveal more, otherwise you’ll all skip the lunch!