The prime minister sent out a hopeful message to the Portuguese on Christmas Day, but was greeted with little festive spirit by opposition parties.

The Portuguese bailout targets may require more action than the shake-up announced by the prime minister Friday, while opposition parties voice their opposition.The junior coalition member CDS-PP also expressed some “discomfort” with the new measures.

Pedro Passos Coelho vowed that Portugal would keep with “total firmness” the conditions to guarantee “controlled public accounts”.

This was the first time pharmacies in the archipelago had actually demanded full price for drugs, but they had threatened to do so in late 2011 and only called off the action when they were paid.

These austerity measures closed a special process of budgetary consolidation of the island’s accounts after the recent discovery of hundreds of millions of euros of unreported accounts, threatening to swamp the autonomous region that owes some €6bn.

Passos Coelho, speaking at a Christmas party for his Social Democratic Party MPs, added that from 2013 it would be evident that “the sacrifices were worthwhile”.

“We can’t continue announcing commitments summit after summit which end up not being fulfilled”, said Passos Coelho in a speech in parliament, “accords are to be fulfilled and respected”.

Remarks by Portuguese Socialist MP Pedro Nuno Santos during a Christmas dinner party caused uproar among his peers in parliament and was picked up by the international media.

The prime minister also said taxes would almost certainly rise in Madeira to the same levels as practiced in the rest of the country.