Portugal readies draft bill to impose windfall tax on energy companies

Galp Energia SGPS SA

05/05/2026 17:55

LISBON, May 5 (Reuters) - Portugal's government will request parliament's approval in the coming weeks to impose a windfall tax on energy companies profiting from an energy price surge amid the Iran war, Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento said on Tuesday.

Portugal, along with Germany, Italy, Spain and Austria, sent a letter to the European Commission in April, calling for such a tax at a European level, but Brussels left it up to individual countries to decide.

Miranda Sarmento said Portugal "would seek the highest possible level of coordination" with other countries and "learn from each other about potential measures that each may be preparing."

"We will take the measures adopted in 2022, recalibrate them, improve them and, in the near term, present a proposal to parliament," Miranda Sarmento told reporters in Brussels, referring to the previous energy price shock after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

He said the current situation differed from 2022 as overall inflationary pressures are now far lower, with core inflation - excluding food and energy - running at around 2.2%.

Although the centre-right government holds only a minority of seats in parliament, the proposal is expected to be approved with the backing of the Socialist Party, which introduced the mechanism in 2022.

 (Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; editing by Andrei Khalip)

 ((sergio.goncalves@thomsonreuters.com; +351213509204; Reuters Messaging: sergio.goncalves.reuters.com@reuters.net/))