A/HRC/36/45/Add.1 services, the Special Rapporteur reiterates that it is not appropriate to set a generally applicable affordability standard at the global or national levels, and much less for one to be set by one stakeholder in the water and sanitation institutional framework. Any such standard would be arbitrary and could not reflect the challenges people face in practice and the context in which they live, including how much they need to spend on housing, food and realizing other human rights. The affordability of water and sanitation services is highly contextual, and Portugal should therefore determine affordability criteria at the national and local levels, adhering to human rights principles, particularly in terms of participation (see A/HRC/30/39, para. 28). The Special Rapporteur emphasizes that States and water and sanitation providers should set policies that reconcile affordability and financial sustainability as part of their financial management. In Portugal, the Special Rapporteur observed that financial sustainably in relation to affordability is by far the priority concern of the governmental actors in the water sector. In 2016, the Minister of the Environment presented the National Commitment for the Sustainability of Public Water Services, which aims to strengthen and harmonize the mechanisms relevant to ensuring affordable water services by, for instance, setting a minimum threshold for access to water services, and establishing special tariffs. 59. The normative content of affordability should be a priority in the agenda of the Portuguese water and sanitation sector and mechanisms should be established to identify the specific needs of groups that live in vulnerable situations, including rural populations, the homeless, the Roma population and the so-called “new poor”. 1. Tariff-setting 60. Setting tariffs for retail water and sanitation services remains a municipal decision in Portugal. However, the decision is not entirely discretionary and has to comply with applicable legal and regulatory provisions. Non-binding tariff regulations regarding the water tariff in Portugal are defined by the regulator, the Water and Waste Services Regulation Authority in continental Portugal, and in Azores, by the Water and Waste Services Regulation Authority for Azores. In continental Portugal, the Water and Waste Services Regulation Authority issued a recommendation in 2009 relating to price regulations, asking water utilities to continue to reflect, in tariff structures, the “principle of economic accessibility, according to which the tariffs should consider the financial capacity of users, contributing to the progressive universal access to water services”. The Water and Waste Services Regulation Authority for Azores also submitted a recommendation for a tariff regime in that region, which contained recommendations that would facilitate the implementation of social tariffs for disadvantaged or large families. 24 61. Furthermore, those non-binding recommendations have emerged in parallel to legislation that reinforced the cost recovery principle in the water and sanitation sector. For instance, the Water Law (Law No. 58/2005) and the Decree-Law on the economic and financial framework of water resources (Decree-Law No. 97/2008) provide that the tariff scheme for water services ensures the gradual recovery of the initial investment and new investments in expansion, modernization and maintenance of the infrastructure. 62. That leads to the situation where investment is necessary but often affects the capacity of the water providers to ensure and uphold social responses to situations of social and economic need. The Special Rapporteur heard testimonies that the cost recovery principle adds pressure for an adjustment in tariffs by water utilities, which has a potentially negative effect on economic accessibility on the part of consumers. 2. Special tariffs 63. Measures that allow low-income users to access water services exist in Portugal. The 2017 State Budget Law, approved after the Special Rapporteur’s visit (Law No. 42/2016), authorizes the Government to establish a legal regime for the automatic attribution of a social tariff for the provision of water services to lower income consumers, namely to 24 14 See http://www.azores.gov.pt/NR/rdonlyres/AC7FEBE0-8F1F-4B35-B8DF4EDC8D2C2AE7/907603/Recomenda%C3%A7%C3%A3oTarif%C3%A1ria2.pdf.