1 of 3 Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa speaks to journalists after casting his vote in Portugal’s general elections in the city of Porto on January 23, 2022 Photo: Paulo Duarte/AP Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa speaks to journalists after voting in Portugal’s general elections in Portugal on January 23, 2022 in the city of Porto Photo: Paulo Duarte/AP
Costa, who led a majority government in parliament at the head of his Socialist Party, announced the decision in a televised statement after a meeting with President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. He said his conscience was clear but he would not run for prime minister again.
Costa is a member of the Socialist Party (PS), which lost support ahead of the 2022 elections. However, contrary to all research, the Portuguese were elected in January last year and did not need alliances to form the government in order to be able to run the country alone.
Thanks to the unprecedented pact between socialists, radical left and communists known as Geringonça, the former city councilor and former mayor of Lisbon came to power in 2015 after losing elections.
As a lover of cuisine, cinema and fado, Costa enjoys enormous popularity. He took advantage of the country’s economic recovery in his first four years in office to scrap austerity measures implemented by the right in exchange for bailouts granted by the European bloc in 2011.
But the socialist, who is a Benfica fan, married to a teacher and has two children, continued to clean up Portugal’s public finances to bring them in line with European budget standards and won the 2019 general election.
Without an absolute majority, Costa kept the “Geringonça” in office until October 2021, when the rejection of the budget triggered new elections and the longestserving Portuguese prime minister since the Carnation Revolution had to test his mandate.
2 of 3 Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa speaks to journalists after casting his vote in the Portuguese parliamentary elections in the city of Porto on January 23, 2022 Photo: Paulo Duarte/AP Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa speaks to journalists after casting their votes in the Portuguese parliamentary elections in Portugal on January 23, 2022 in the city of Porto Photo: Paulo Duarte/AP
His former allies do not hide their distrust of the politician, and some see him as an “obstacle” to a new alliance with the left. Although he already said: “Everyone knows that I am a man of dialogue and compromise.”
The Portuguese president, Costa’s professor at the law school in Lisbon, once mocked his former student and his “chronic and somewhat unpleasant optimism.” Costa replied that he had “militant optimism.”
António Costa persistently built a career with the same patience he shows when putting together puzzles, his favorite pastime.
The politician, born on July 17, 1961 in Lisbon, is the descendant of a large family from Goa, a former Portuguese area of influence in India.
He grew up in the intellectual circles of his parents, the socialist journalist Maria Antonia Palla and the communist writer Orlando da Costa. His halfbrother Ricardo Costa is seven years younger and an influential journalist in Portugal.
At the age of 14, “Babush” (meaning “boy” in Konkani, the language of Goa) joined the Socialist Youth and says at the time that he suffered more from his parents’ divorce than from the color of his skin.
Costa graduated with a degree in law and political science and became a lawyer in 1988. In 1995, at the age of 34, he was appointed Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs, a key position in the minority government of António Guterres, now SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations. In 1999 he became the country’s justice minister.
After a brief period in the European Parliament, Costa returned to his country in 2005 as Interior Minister, but left the government two years later to run for mayor of Lisbon, where he took his first steps at the head of a trade union in the EU and consolidated his popularity.
Being mayor of the Portuguese capital also allowed him to distance himself from former prime minister José Sócrates, who was removed from office in 2011 and later charged with corruption in November 2014, the year Costa rose to the top of the Socialist Party .
3 of 3 Portuguese Prime Minister (and General Secretary of the Socialist Party), António Costa, dances with a supporter during a campaign in the center of the capital Lisbon on January 28, 2022 Photo: Armando Franca/AP Portugal’s Prime Minister António Costa (and General Secretary of the Socialist Party), dances with a supporter during a campaign in the center of the capital Lisbon on January 28, 2022 Photo: Armando Franca/AP