According to the survey, which was conducted between October 25 and November 27 last year, the period that coincided with the fall of the António Costa government, about 50% of Portuguese say they trust the courts and the judicial system. On the other hand, the proportion of the population who have high or very high confidence in the national government and the Assembly of the Republic is 30%.
The proportion of people reporting high levels of trust in government has fallen by more than ten percentage points in Portugal compared to 2021, but the OECD itself notes that these results may be linked to “a general decline in trust in the political system as a whole, due to the survey coinciding with the height of a major political crisis that led to the call for national and regional elections.”
Despite this caveat, the results show the same trend across the OECD: “Trust in the police, the justice system, the public service and local authorities is greater than in the national government,” on average across the 30 countries that took part in this survey.
On average across OECD countries, the percentage of people who have little or no trust in government (44%) exceeds the percentage of people who have high or somewhat high trust (39%).
The report also addresses other issues relating to public institutions, revealing in particular that about half of the Portuguese people are satisfied with the national education system.
On the other hand, only 30% said they were satisfied with the national health system.(SNS), and more than half of the Portuguese people say they are dissatisfied with social networking services.
The OECD also conducted a survey on participation in democracy, which revealed that the majority of the Portuguese people (over 90%) support referendums on issues of national importance.
