Costa's first role in a Socialist government was as Minister of Parliamentary Affairs under
Prime Minister
Antonio Guterres
between 1997 and 1999. He was
Minister of Justice
from 1999 to 2002.
[14]
Costa was a
member of the European Parliament
for the
Socialist Party
(
PES
), heading the list for the
2004 European elections
after the death of top candidate
Antonio de Sousa Franco
. On 20 July 2004 he was elected as one of the 14
vice-presidents of the European Parliament
. He also served on the
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs
.
[15]
Costa resigned as an MEP on 11 March 2005 to become
Minister of State and Internal Administration
in the government of
Jose Socrates
following the
2005 national elections
.
[16]
Mayor of Lisbon
edit
Antonio Costa resigned all government offices in May 2007 to become his party's candidate for the municipality of
Lisbon
, Portugal's capital city. He was elected as Lisbon's mayor on 15 July 2007 and reelected in 2009 and 2013, with a bigger majority each time. In April 2015 he resigned his duties as a mayor, while he was already the secretary general of the Socialist Party and the party's candidate for Prime Minister, so that he could prepare his campaign for the October 2015 general elections.
[17]
Candidate for prime minister
edit
In September 2014, the Socialist Party chose Costa as its candidate to be prime minister of Portugal in the
2015 national elections
. In a ballot to select the party's candidate, gaining nearly 70 percent of the votes, he defeated party leader
Antonio Jose Seguro
, who announced his resignation after the result.
[18]
By April 2015, he stepped down as mayor to focus on his campaign.
[19]
During the campaign, Costa pledged to ease back on
austerity
and give more
disposable income
back to households.
[20]
He proposed to boost incomes, hiring and growth in order to cut the
budget deficits
while scrapping austerity measures and cutting taxes for the middle and lower classes, asserting that would still allow deficits to reduce in line with the
Euro convergence criteria
.
[21]
Also, he pledged to roll back a hugely unpopular hike in
value added tax
on restaurants and reinstate some benefits for civil servants.
[19]
First term (2015?2019)
edit
On 4 October 2015, the conservative
Portugal Ahead
coalition that had ruled the country since 2011 came first in
the elections
winning 38.6% of the vote, while the Socialist Party (PS) came second with 32.3%.
Passos Coelho
was reappointed Prime Minister the following days, but Antonio Costa formed an alliance with the other parties on the left (the
Left Bloc
, the
Portuguese Communist Party
and the
Ecologist Party "The Greens"
), which altogether constituted a majority in Parliament, and toppled the government on 10 November (the
People?Animals?Nature
party also voted in favour of the motion of rejection presented by the left alliance). After toppling the conservative government, Costa was chosen as the new prime minister of Portugal by
President Cavaco Silva
on 24 November and assumed office on 26 November.
[17]
[22]
By March 2017, polls put support for Costa's Socialists at 42 percent, up 10 points from their share of the vote in the 2015 election and close to a level that would give them a majority in parliament
were the country to vote again
.
[23]
In the
2017 local elections
, Costa further consolidated power in Portugal as his party captured a record haul of 158 town halls out of the country's 308 cities and towns; nationwide, the Socialists’ vote share topped 38 percent, again up from their result in the 2015 parliamentary election.
[24]
During his tenure, Portugal experienced its deadliest wildfires ever, firstly in
Pedrogao Grande
in June 2017 (65 dead) and later across the country in October 2017 (41 dead).
[25]
In October 2017, the opposition
People's Party
(CDS) launched a
motion of no-confidence
in Costa's government over its failure to prevent the loss of human lives in the lethal
Iberian wildfires
, the second such disaster in four months; the motion was largely symbolic as the minority Socialist government continued to be backed in parliament by two left-wing parties.
[26]
In April 2018,
Reuters
reported that, "Since coming to power, Costa's government has managed to combine fiscal discipline with measures to support growth, while reversing most of the austerity policies imposed by the previous center-right administration during the 2010?13 debt crisis.
[27]
In early 2019, Costa's government survived another opposition motion of no confidence lodged over a wave of public sector strikes.
[28]
Ahead of the
2019 national elections
, Costa ruled out a coalition government with the
hard left
if, as expected, his governing party won the election but fell shy of a parliamentary majority. Instead, he indicated he favored a continuation of the current pact in parliament with the Communists and/or the Left Bloc ? rather than any formal coalition in which they would have government ministers.
[29]
Second term (2019?2022)
edit
Costa's second government was sworn in on 26 October 2019,
[30]
the biggest government in Portuguese democracy, with 70 members: 20 ministers, including the Prime Minister, and 50 secretaries of state.
[31]
This government would prove to be very unstable due to the lack of an agreement between the left-wing parties, and, in the vote of the 2020 budget, BE and CDU abstained while the Socialists were the only party voting in favour.
[32]
Despite the political instability from the lack of an agreement, the XXII government was dominated by the
COVID-19 pandemic
. The first case appeared on 2 March 2020, and shortly after, the government declared a state of emergency, that was signed by the President, and a lockdown was also issued.
[33]
The lockdown and restrictions were lifted in June 2020, but new measures would be enacted in the following months as infections and deaths rose. By mid 2022, Portugal had become one the worst affected countries in the world by the pandemic, with a death rate of 25.8 per 1 million, and an infection rate of 1,090 per 1 million.
[34]
The Covid vaccination campaign in Portugal, led by Admiral
Henrique Gouveia e Melo
, which was nominated by the government, was a major success with more than 28 million vaccines given and nearly 9 million people fully vaccinated (85% of the population), one of the biggest rates in the world.
[35]
Between 1 January and 30 June 2021, Antonio Costa presided the
Council of the European Union
. In the
2021 local elections
, the Socialist Party remained the largest party in the country, but suffered heavy loses in several cities, especially Lisbon which was lost to a center-right coalition.
[36]
The results were seen as a "yellow card" to Antonio Costa.
[37]
At the same time, the left-wing parties, BE and CDU, were threatening to reject the 2022 budget if Costa's government didn't made more concessions.
[38]
The President warned that budget rejection would lead to snap elections, which ultimately happened as the left-wing parties joined forces with the right-wing and rejected the 2022 budget, the first rejection in democracy.
[39]
Snap elections were called for
30 January 2022
.
Third term (2022?2024)
edit
Costa was re-elected in the
2022 Portuguese legislative election
, with the PS winning 120 seats, up from 108 seats, in a surprise outright majority in the Assembly. In the weeks leading up to the election, polling suggested that Costa and the Socialist party would retain their status as the largest party in the Assembly but would need the help of other parties to achieve a majority. In his victory speech, Costa thanked voters for giving him "an increased responsibility" and promising to govern "with and for all Portuguese".
[40]
This gave him the mandate to form the
XXIII Constitutional Government of Portugal
.
[41]
Costa’s third term was marred by a wave of scandals and resignations that affected his popularity negatively in the opinion polls.
[42]
11 ministers and secretaries of state left their roles, over allegations of corruption and past misconduct or questionable practices.
[43]
The most significant scandal was the
TAP
scandal where Costa’s government has been involved. Infrastructure Minister
Pedro Nuno Santos
submitted his resignation in December 2022, following a public backlash over a hefty severance pay a secretary of state received from state-owned TAP, which fell under his remit.
[44]
Costa replaced Santos with
Joao Galamba
who submitted his resignation in May 2023 as the TAP scandal widened. Opposition parties said that Galamba concealed from parliament that he had proposed that then TAP CEO
Christine Ourmieres-Widener
meet Socialist lawmakers to prepare for a parliamentary hearing about her severance package. Widener was later fired after an official inspection found that the severance was illegal. Galamba initially said the preparatory meeting was TAP's idea, but acknowledged it was he who had told Widener that, if she wanted, she could attend the meeting where his advisors would also be present.
[45]
Galamba added that one of his advisors, who took notes on what was discussed at the meeting, had been fired, and taken a laptop with confidential information with him. The laptop was later recovered by the national intelligence service SIS, leading to accusations from the opposition of a government overreach since such cases were a police matter. Costa denied that neither he nor any member of the government had given orders to SIS to recover the laptop.
[45]
He added that he would reject the resignation of Galamba, keeping him in the job against president
Marcelo Rebelo De Sousa
's and the opposition’s request.
[46]
President Rebelo de Sousa responded by issuing a warning that Costa's government needed to work on preserving its credibility, while refraining from using his power to dissolve parliament.
[47]
Resignation
edit
On 7 November 2023, Portuguese
prosecutors
detained Costa's chief of staff
Vitor Escaria
and named Joao Galamba a
formal suspect
[48]
in
an investigation
into alleged corruption in
lithium
mining,
green hydrogen
production and a
data centre
deals. Over 40 searches were carried out, some of which in government and
local government
buildings, including
Escaria
's office, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the
Ministry of the Environment and Climate Action
.
[49]
[50]
Costa is also under suspicion of enabling the lithium and green hydrogen deals, and will be inquired by the
Supreme Court of Justice
.
[51]
In a televised statement in the afternoon, Costa announced his resignation from the position of prime minister, saying that "the dignity of the functions of prime minister is not compatible with any suspicion about his integrity, his good conduct and even less with the suspicion of the practice of any criminal act".
[5]
The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, accepted Costa's resignation on the same day.
[52]
However, the resignation of Costa and his government was only made official on 8 December, in order to have the State Budget for 2024 approved. The
Assembly of the Republic
was also dissolved. The president scheduled
early elections to be held on 10 March 2024
. Costa's government remained in office in a caretaker capacity until the new government (led by
Luis Montenegro
) was sworn in after the elections.
[8]
[53]
[9]