Joaquim Pedro Lampreia is quoted in an article in the Jornal de Negócios entitled "Unconstitutional covid law takes time away from tax authorities to collect" about the recent Constitutional Court ruling that declared one of the laws, approved during the pandemic, to suspend the counting of deadlines for tax purposes to be unconstitutional.

The January 2021 decree-law thus established the "suspension of tax enforcement proceedings in progress or that may be initiated by the Tax and Customs Authority (AT), Social Security and other entities" between 1 January and 31 March 2021. It also establishes "the suspension of limitation and forfeiture periods relating to all types of processes and procedures within the scope of executions in progress or initiated during the period in question".

In this sense, Joaquim Pedro Lampreia explains that the government "sought to implement measures that would prevent the coercive collection of tax debts - by imposing a standstill on enforcement proceedings - but, in order to prevent this standstill from determining that the debts owed were time-barred, it created a new cause for suspending the limitation period".

• The article is available here.