“We will spare no effort in providing clarifications regarding a serious problem that did not originate in Portugal,” he said.

Luís Montenegro was speaking during the second extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers in two days, at the Prime Minister's official residence in São Bento, Lisbon, following the widespread power outage that affected Portugal and Spain on Monday.

The Prime Minister announced that the government will ask the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators to carry out an independent audit of the electricity systems of the affected countries “to fully determine the causes that led to this situation”.

“Secondly, we decided to create an Independent Technical Commission in Portugal to assess the reaction and management mechanisms for this crisis, the resilience and recovery of the electrical system, the resilience of critical infrastructures and services and also the functioning of the civil protection, communications and health systems,” he said.

The Government will propose that this committee have seven individuals: an expert in the energy sector, an expert in the communications networks and systems sector, an expert in the civil protection sector, an expert in the health sector and three individuals appointed by the Assembly of the Republic.

Shortly after Montenegro's initial statement, the ministers of the Presidency, Environment, Parliamentary Affairs and Infrastructure – who were in the front row – left for a meeting in parliament, called by the President of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, with the parties.

The Prime Minister announced that the government has also decided “not to extend or worsen the declaration of an energy crisis”, which will end today at 11:59 pm.

In the question phase, Montenegro admitted that this commission will only be able to function in the next legislature, since parliament is dissolved and there will be early legislative elections on 18 May, but he considered that there was time.

“We will have time. This is not an Independent Technical Commission to produce quick results in a hurry. It is an Independent Technical Commission to deepen and evaluate reaction mechanisms, crisis management, recovery of the electrical system, infrastructure resilience, and critical services,” he said, giving as an example the commission formed following the 2017 fires.

Montenegro assured that the Government is “very committed to drawing all conclusions about the causes and responses” of what is happening, expressing full availability “to help European bodies in the audit process” that the country requested.