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Title: Center-right leader Luís Montenegro sworn in as Portuguese prime minister
Summary: Having vowed to not work with the far right, his minority government will need Socialist Party support to pass legislation.

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Center-right leader Luís Montenegro was sworn in as Portugal’s new prime minister in Lisbon’s Ajuda Palace on Tuesday, ushering in a minority government that will have difficulty passing legislation in the country’s fractured parliament.



“The Portuguese people voted for political change,” Montenegro said. “Our intention is to respect their will … And to be focused on solving the people’s problems .”



The new prime minister promised to lower taxes for the middle class and foster friendlier conditions for business, with the ultimate aim of luring back the nearly one-third of Portugal’s younger citizens who have migrated abroad in search of better-paying jobs. He added that he would also seek to carry out structural reforms to guarantee the survival of the country’s public services and implement measures to address the housing crisis.



Montenegro additionally said his government would seek to present a comprehensive plan to fight corruption and make the Portuguese government more transparent. The announcement comes six months after his predecessor, António Costa, resigned after his official residence was raided by police in the midst of an influence-peddling probe.



But it’s unclear how Montenegro’s Democratic Alliance coalition will pass the bills needed to make his promises a reality. While the center right narrowly won last month’s snap national election, it fell far short of securing the 116 seats required to form a governing majority in the Portuguese parliament.



Meanwhile, the far-right Chega party performed above expectations to net 50 of the legislative body’s 230 seats. Because Montenegro has vowed to not make any deals with Chega, his Democratic Alliance will be obliged to seek support from the Socialist Party, which has governed the country for the past eight years.



Piecemeal agreements between the country’s two largest parties appear possible. After Chega refused to back the center-right candidate to preside over the Portuguese parliament last week, Montenegro’s lawmakers were able to forge a deal with their center-left counterparts to split the speakership, with each party’s candidate serving as speaker for two years.



Similarly, Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos has indicated that he is open to helping the new minority government amend the country’s budget to increase funding for teachers, police and healthcare workers.



But long-term collaboration appears unlikely. Santos has made clear that he has no intention of serving as Montenegro’s crutch, and the left wing of the Socialist Party is unlikely to lend its support to the center-right’s budget proposal for 2025.



In 2022, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa dissolved parliament and called snap elections after Prime Minister António Costa’s budget proposal was rejected by a majority of lawmakers.



But Rebelo de Sousa has expressed no desire to send voters back to the polls before his mandate expires in 2026, and he’s likely to push the country’s centrist parties to work together to avoid an electoral scenario in which the far right could make further gains by campaigning against ineffective mainstream political forces. 



After swearing Montenegro in, Rebelo de Sousa said that although Portuguese electors had chosen to “switch hemispheres” after 8 years of Socialist Party rule and entrust the government to the center-right instead of the center-left, they had also deliberately chosen “the moderates over the radicals.”



“You have the backing of the President of the Republic,” Rebelo de Sousa told Montenegro. “But you lack that backing in the parliament, and you will have to achieve it by building consensus.”



Montenegro, for his part, challenged the Socialist Party to decide whether it would work with his government to pass legislation that would benefit the general public, or whether it would vote with the far-right in order to reject its proposals.



“You must be clear about whether you want to be part of the democratic opposition, or if you want to help block democracy,” he said.



The new government has a distinctly EU flavor: Four of the cabinet’s 17 ministers were drafted from the European Parliament, among them European People’s Party Vice President Paulo Rangel, who has been named foreign minister.



Montenegro’s chief of staff, diplomat Pedro Perestrelo Pinto, is also a Brussels veteran who previously served in Portugal’s Permanent Representation to the EU. 



The selection has been interpreted as a sign that the new prime minister wants to underscore Portugal’s pro-European positions and further strengthen Lisbon’s relationship with Brussels.
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Author: Aitor Hernández-Morales
PublishedDate: 2024-04-02
Category: Europe
NewsPaper: Politico EU
Tags: Elections, Elections in Europe, National Politics, Politics