The Technical Support Instrument (TSI) is the EU programme that provides tailor-made technical expertise to EU Member States to design and to implement reforms at the national level, with an emphasis on the green and digital transitions. The TSI also supports the preparation and implementation of Recovery and Resilience Plans.
Initiated in 2021, the TSI is the successor of the Structural Reform Support Programme (SRSP). Since 2017, both programmes have helped design, develop and implement over 1800 reform projects in 27 Member States.
COMPLETED AND ONGOING REFORM PROJECTS IN PORTUGAL
Reform projects approved under the Technical Support Instrument
The Technical Support Instrument yearly cycle is launched during the dedicated TSI Annual Conference. In April 2024, High-Level representatives from the European Commission, Member States and other Institutions gathered to share their perspectives on how the TSI 2025 could support Member States for the successful design and implementation of resilience-enhancing reforms, and in particular Public Administrations to be fit for the future and adaptable to change.
The conference also started the discussion with Member States on potential multi-country projects - geared at addressing common issues among Member States thereby emphasizing the EU added-value of the instrument - and presented a set of "Flagship" projects - supporting reforms which are largely needed across Member States and are in line with the EU priorities.
For 2024, the Commission approved the following 16 reform support projects for Portugal:
- Contractualization between levels of Government: capacity building, monitoring, and evaluation
- Fostering a higher education system better adapted to the labour market: towards an improved skills forecasting system
- Implementation of National qualification Plan and development of a specialized training common framework, in the field of rural fires
- Improving Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) on National Energy Regulators
- Integrated methodology for program budgeting, green budgeting and gender budgeting and spending reviews
- Integration of Population-Based Care and Management through Local Health Units (LHUs)
- Optimizing Performance Budgeting within Medium-Term Frameworks in Portugal
- Supporting a new institutional framework and coordinated approach to migrant integration
Multi-country projects:
- Boosting the cooperation on the usage of distributional impact assessment through microsimulation
- Capacity enhancement for CCPs authorization, supervision, recovery, and resolution
- EQUAL AI: the role of Public Administration with focus in Equality Bodies
- Enhancing the Centre of Government’s capacities to steer complex priorities and manage crisis and megatrends through peer to peer review and learning
- Enhancing the national strategies and frameworks to support victims of crimes in Estonia, Portugal and Malta
- Promoting the mental health of youth by addressing the risks of online gambling and gaming
- Raising the quality of early childhood education and care by strengthening governance, monitoring, and evaluation
- Empowering Child Protection System in Portugal towards de-institutionalised approaches
For 2023, the Commission approved the following 18 reform support projects for Portugal:
- Reforming Higher Education National Access Framework: towards a more inclusive approach
- Implementation of strategic initiatives of the National Strategy for Smart Cities/Smart Territories
- Study for the construction of a unify Social Benefit
- Developing structural tools to support the implementation of the European Child Guarantee in Portugal
- SupTech roadmap for the securities market supervision (advanced analytics, AI and other tools)
- Industrial ecosystems
Multi-country projects:
- Building Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (PCSD) across national and local government in Portugal
- Strengthening tax compliance by implementing behavioural insights for revenue administrations in Belgium, Austria and Portugal
- PACE - Civil service mobility
- PACE - Public Administration Performance Improvement - Public Real Estate Optimization
- EU Supervisory Digital Finance Academy
- Supporting the implementation of spending reviews in Portugal
- Climate adaptation
- Industrial ecosystems
- Proof of concept of AI models in market abuse monitoring
- EU Survey of Central Government Public Servants: Strengthening Evidence-based People Management Policies and Reforms
- Communicating the benefits of the recovery and resilience plans to the general public
- Civic Participation and Emergent Technologies
In 2022, the Commission approved 14 reform projects for Portugal:
- Public Finance Management Reform – Phase II
- Strengthening the agricultural sector in Portugal: designing a new taxation framework for agricultural properties
- Artificial intelligence for better regulation at EU (AI4AI@EU)
- Development of resilient, innovative, and human-centric digital government services
- Use of artificial intelligence on audit of the EU Funds and contribute to improve management and control systems
- Support to the tourism ecosystem: towards a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism
- Development of a strategic plan for decarbonisation, digitization, and sustainable blue economy for the maritime and fisheries sectors and marine environment planning and sustainability
- Steppingstones for implementation of a National Strategy for Genomic Medicine in Portugal
- Regional and local authorities – Enhancing cooperation & Quality of public administration
Multi-country projects:
- EU Supervisory Digital Finance Academy - CMVM
- Gender mainstreaming in public policy and budget processes
- Micro-data platform for productivity
- Implementation of the European Child Guarantee
- Support to REPowerEU
More information can be found in the 2022 Country Factsheets.
In 2021, the Commission approved the following 17 reform projects for Portugal:
- Enhancing conduct supervision and new challenges in insurance supervision
- Analytical capacity for fiscal oversight
- Support to promote the access to the capital markets (Capital Markets Union project)
- Increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of Tax Courts
- National Smart Cities Strategy
- Standardize Statistical Information for Better Regulation project (SIBER project)
- Pilot implementation of the National Plan for Integrated Wildland Fire Management
- New Green tax reform – resources and pollution
- More effective, efficient and accountable environmental permits and inspections
- Developing a macroeconomic and fiscal model for the Portuguese Ministry of Finance
- Design of a digital financial education strategy for Portugal
- Accounting reforms and Financial Management Information System
- Developing a risk based methodology for an automatic anti- money laundering/counter terrorist financing risk categorisation for supervised entities
- The impact of regulation on international investment in Portugal: opportunities and challenges for structural reforms
- Development of digitalisation in the Justice system
- Enhancing migrant integration services
- General technical support for the implementation of Portugal's Recovery and Resilience Plan
More information can be found in the 2021 Country Factsheets.
Structural Reform Support Programme (SRSP) projects (2017-2020)
The TSI expands on the experience of the SRSP programme in building capacity in Member States. You can find the full list of SRSP projects here.
Highlighted projects
The Commission supported a project aimed at carrying out the Portuguese Action Programme for the prevention of rural wildfires in three pilot regions.
The European Commission supported the Portuguese authorities aiming to define the National Smart Cities Strategy.
The Commission provided support to Portuguese Public Finance Council to enhance its capacity in debt sustainability analysis, tax modelling and revenue forecasting.
Want to find out more?
You can easily search projects from all Member States through the interactive map and learn more about reform projects.
Related links
Selected projects for promising results and their potential to be replicated across the EU.