The total published by the National Budgetary Department reveals that 906 million euros were collected in 2015. It also disclosed that there has been a strong focus on collecting money from taxpayers by means of fines since Portugal sought a financial bailout in 2011, when less than 600 million euros had lined the state’s coffers from fines and penalties.


The largest part of these receipts originated in payments and penalties from overdue payments to the state.


Around 300 million euros of the total came from traffic and “diverse” fines and penalties, and it was here where the biggest increase in revenue was reported.


Fines issued by GNR and PSP police officers aided the state’s cause to the tune of almost 90 million euros.


This translates into around 10,000 euros an hour being collected by traffic officials or 240,000 euros a day.


The figure is a 30.7 percent rise on 2014 and is the result of more than 28,000 drivers being caught on their mobile phones, a further 182,000 drivers were stopped for speeding and close to 40,000 were fined for driving under the influence.


The increase in fines being issued could have been even higher, with protesting police officers staging a month of leniency towards the end of summer when it came to issuing citizens with fines for offences such as transgressions of the Highway Code.
PSP police, whose task it is to patrol Portugal’s urban areas, were asked by unions to “favour educational actions” and be “non-repressive” during the five weeks of protests.


In total, more than 23,000 officers were asked to avoid issuing traffic fines or other punitive measures.


A previous action in 2007 resulted in an estimated drop of approximately 80 percent in the revenue the state obtained from the payment of traffic fines.


In comments this week to Correio da Manhã, César Nogueira, chairman of the GNR Association said the increase in fines can be explained in the rise in police stops versus a drop in patrols.


“We are short in terms of manpower, but police operations focussed on traffic violations have increased, with officers increasingly strained to carry out their tasks”, Rodrigues argued.


Paulo Rodrigues, who leads the PSP Police Union, shared this point of view.


“Much value is given to quantity and very little to quality. Praise and promotions are based on the number of fines issued. While it appears that police are out persecuting motorists, we have to comply with a predetermined number of operations set out each month and every year”, Rodrigues explained.


Despite the increase in police stops across Portugal last year, the number of traffic collisions on the nation’s roads rose five percent to almost 123,000.