“What is at stake is not occasional travel, but regular, permanent and indefinite travel to ensure 12 to 24-hour emergency shifts in municipalities other than the contracted workplace,” the union said in a statement.

At issue is the decree-law promulgated last week by the President of the Republic, following the Government’s request to improve the initial bill that had reached Belém, which establishes centralised regional emergency services to address the shortage of specialists, particularly in obstetrics and gynaecology.

In practice, it is envisaged that two or more local health units in close proximity will concentrate the provision of external emergency care at a single hospital when it is not possible to guarantee the simultaneous operation of an emergency service in each health unit.

According to Fnam, in light of the Labour Code and the collective agreements in force, the new regime constitutes a change in the workplace, which cannot be imposed unilaterally by a decree-law.

The federation of medical unions also points out that the law “clashes head-on” with FNAM’s collective agreements, which state that a doctor “is not obliged to work outside the municipality of their workplace”.

The union structure led by Joana Bordalo e Sá claims that the regional emergency model “profoundly alters” the organisation of working time, which is a matter of mandatory union negotiation, but that the Government “did not negotiate”.

“It merely presented us with excerpts from the bill, preventing a serious and technical analysis that would have allowed for a counterproposal and improvements to the bill,” says FNAM, which believes that the bill promotes a “reconfiguration of the National Health Service without planning, without negotiation and without respect for users and professionals”.

According to the association, the measure’s impact on users is serious, as the decree-law removes local care, starting with pregnant women and newborns on the south bank and extending to other regions of the country.

“A regional emergency is not a metropolitan emergency, and this model takes essential care away from the population,” warns the trade union federation, which reiterated its demand for a “serious and transparent” negotiation process.

The law, published in the Official Gazette on Wednesday, stipulates that healthcare professionals assigned to the future centralised regional emergency services may not be transferred to hospitals more than 60 kilometres from the local health unit to which they belong.

"Any transfers on duty, never exceeding 60 kilometres, to ensure centralised external emergency services by health professionals, are temporary in nature, are properly planned, and the payment of expenses arising from the increase in travel costs is guaranteed, in accordance with the provisions of the Labour Code and the General Law on Public Service Employment," states the decree-law.

At the end of 2025, the Ministry of Health announced that Garcia de Orta Hospital in Almada will be the first to receive a regional obstetrics and gynaecology emergency department for the Setúbal Peninsula.

The three hospitals in this region – Barreiro, Almada, and Setúbal – have experienced the greatest constraints due to a shortage of professionals to complete the obstetrics and gynaecology rosters, leading to recurring temporary closures of emergency services in this speciality.