It is fundamental to learn from the lessons of the disaster and change. With the PTRR, Portugal is better prepared to protect the people. Energy, water, communications and food cannot fail. From the tragedy, a stronger country emerges. 

This plan is not just to respond to the last crisis; it is to prepare Portugal for the following decades and protect the next generations.

What is the PTRR? 

The PTRR is the plan to rebuild and recover the losses caused by the storms of the start of, to prepare the country to face climate events and other extreme risks, and to improve emergency response capabilities and support for the community at these moments. 

It is a plan of reforms and investments that organizes the reaction and structural transformation for a country that is more resilient taking account of the lessons learned from the recent extreme event (storms, wildland fires, blackout, droughts, cyberattacks, earthquakes). The PTRR envisages actions from the pubic – state, regions, and municipalities, and the private and social sectors, to be executed within a 9-year horizon, split into the short, medium, and long term. This plan allocates an overall sum of 22.6 billion euros, between national public funding, (37%), private funding (34%), and European funds (19%).  

The PTRR measures and actions are organised in 3 pillars, 15 areas:

I. Recover – dozens of actions for reconstruction and support for people, companies, and social institutions given the 5.3-billion-euro losses caused in infrastructure, public facilities, production capacity, housing, and natural assets by the storms that hit in January and February 2026. Some measures have been under execution since February, and others will be rolled out in the short term. 

II. Protect - 61 reforms and investments that strengthen the communities, regions, companies, infrastructure, and essential services (energy, communications, water), and forests, making them more resilient, in a total sum of around 15 billion euros, distributed throughout the short, medium, and long term.

III. Respond - 24 reforms and investments to improve emergency response and assistance in disasters and change the model of risk coverage, acting at the level of the people, communications, and infrastructure, to investments set at 2.3 billion euros, to be developed mostly in the medium term. 

Examples of some of the emblematic measures to Protect and Respond: 

• Natural and earthquake disaster fund, with a reform of the hazard coverage scheme and the creation of mandatory insurance for housing, backed by a solidarity mechanism to ensure universal access
• Boosting Civil Protection’s technical and operational capabilities
• Reforms of the National Civil Protection System and INEM.
• “Freguesias Ligadas” (Connected Parishes) Programme (redundant communications in all the parishes) 
• Reform of the national emergency communications system (SIRESP) and implementation of the Cell Broadcast public alert system 
• Hertz radio resilient critical network and Disaster Recovery Hub with the capacity to Broadcast specific emergency messages 
• New Calamity Law to regulate assistance and management of the situation in exceptional circumstances  
• National emergency hosting system  
• Broadening the Municipal Emergency Fund 
• National reserve of critical medication and medical devices
• Building structural dams and hundreds of lakes and small hydro-agricultural farms – “Água que Une” (Water than Unites Us) 
• Reinforcing and upgrading the electricity grid and gas network 
• Accelerating the decentralised production of energy and its storage
• Boosting cybersecurity and the State’s digital resilience 
• Strategic reserves, food silos, and cold storage network 
• National agenda for development of low-density regions and population settlement 
• Development of technological parks and business expansion areas 
• Coastal protection and the creation of an ocean radar system 
• Structural reduction of the combustible load in forests and protection of villages 
• Investment in energy and communications resilience capabilities for critical infrastructure and essential services