Lisbon, June 27, 2024 (Lusa) - Former Socialist Prime Minister António Costa, who was approved on Thursday for the role of president of the European Council, led three governments in Portugal between November 2015 and April this year, the last of which was supported by an absolute majority in parliament.
Leader of the Socialist Party (PS) between November 2014 and December last year, António Costa was the second longest-serving prime minister in democracy, with more than eight years in office, behind former PSD president Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who headed three governments between 1985 and 1995.
António Costa resigned as prime minister on 7 November last year after the Attorney General's Office issued a statement referring to him as the target of investigations under the so-called "Operation Influencer" - a judicial process investigating the installation of a data centre in Sines, and lithium and hydrogen projects.
"The dignity of the office of prime minister and the confidence that the Portuguese have in the institutions is absolutely incompatible with the fact that someone, who is the prime minister, is under suspicion of his integrity, good behaviour or is the subject of a criminal case," declared António Costa.
On the 24th, the former Socialist prime minister was heard by the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DCIAP) without having been made a defendant in the case. António Costa was heard, at his request, for around an hour and a half by prosecutor Rita Madeira.
Considered a skilled political negotiator, António Costa took office on 26 November 2015 following the legislative elections of that year. The PS lost, but it managed to form a minority government supported in parliament by the Left Bloc, PCP, and PEV — an unprecedented left-wing majority solution that was dubbed the geringonça.
António Costa won the legislative elections in October 2019, albeit without an absolute majority, and formed a second government that was no longer based on written commitments with the Left Bloc, PCP and PEV.
António Costa's second government fell following the rejection of the State Budget for 2022 after parties to the right and left of the PS voted against the government's proposal. The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, decided to dissolve the Speaker of Parliament and scheduled early parliamentary elections that took place in January 2022, which the PS won with an absolute majority.
At the European level, António Costa stood out when he managed to stop an Excessive Deficit Procedure against Portugal opened by Brussels in 2017 and, in 2020, following the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, when he was one of the principal negotiators of the political consensus that allowed the creation of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism, through the issuance of debt by the European Union.
In the European Union, on a political level, António Costa has fought against the austerity policies of the previous decade and for the revision and flexibilisation of the eurozone stability pact. He has advocated the creation of a permanent European mechanism against cyclical crises and a re-industrialisation programme to increase Europe's strategic autonomy, although he absolutely rejects protectionist perspectives. From the outset, he condemned Russia's military intervention in Ukraine. Mayor of Lisbon between July 2007 and April 2015, son of journalist Maria Antónia Palla and writer and advertising technician Orlando Costa, Goan and PCP activist, António Luís Santos da Costa was born in Lisbon on 17 July 1961.
At the age of 14, he joined the Socialist Youth (JS), where he began his political activity, always closely followed by the current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), António Guterres, gaining special notoriety in the academic movement and by organising the Democratic Left Convention in 1985.
With a degree in Legal and Political Sciences from the Faculty of Law in Lisbon and a postgraduate qualification in European Studies from the Catholic University, António Costa worked as a trainee in Jorge Sampaio's law firm. He arrived at the PS national leadership in 1986 by his hand, as part of a team led by Vítor Constâncio. He always supported Sampaio for the party leadership and was his campaign director in the 1996 presidential elections.
Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Justice in the two governments led by Guterres, Costa continued to be one of the main faces of the Socialists from 2002 onwards, leading the Socialist bench in parliament during the leadership of Ferro Rodrigues.
In 2004, he ran for the European Parliament in second place on the PS list in an election in which the Socialists won an absolute majority in terms of seats but in which the list leader, former Finance Minister Sousa Franco, died in the middle of the campaign, after incidents between Socialists at the Matosinhos fish market.
With José Sócrates as the leader of the first Socialist government with an absolute majority, Costa was the "number two" in that executive, acting as Minister of State and Home Affairs.
A Benfica fan, agnostic, and married with two children, António Costa, is defined as a self-assured, restless and persistent politician, praised for his political skill and negotiating ability. He has even been compared to the Russian Rasputin for the pleasure he gets from backroom games.
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