António
Costa’s legacy: The far right in Portugal
The
ultranationalist Chega party is thriving by campaigning on issues the president
of the European Council failed to address while prime minister.
European
Council President António Costa. When he became prime minister in 2015,
Portugal prided itself on being the only country in Europe with no far-right
political presence. |
February
10, 2026 4:00 am CET
By Aitor
Hernández-Morales
The
biggest loser of this weekend’s presidential election in Portugal was European
Council President António Costa.
Not only
was Costa’s former rival in the Socialist Party, António José Seguro, elected
the new head of state, the results also cemented the far-right Chega party as
the country’s second-largest political force.
Seguro —
a moderate, center-left former member of the European Parliament and minister
who was ousted as Socialist Party leader by Costa in 2014 — originally said his
decision to launch a long-shot run for the presidency was motivated by his
“perplexion” with the direction the country had taken during Costa’s eight-year
stint as prime minister.
Based on
Sunday’s results, voters appear to share Seguro’s concern that the country is
on the wrong course.
When
Costa became prime minister in 2015, Portugal prided itself on being the only
country in Europe with no far-right political presence. But this weekend, Chega
leader André Ventura took in a third of the vote thanks to the support of a
substantial chunk of the electorate exasperated by the affordability crisis,
rising immigration rates and political corruption — issues many link to Costa’s
time in office.
“It’s
completely legitimate to tie this phenomenon to the economic and social model
implemented here during the past 10 years — an economy based on low-skilled
labor and low wages in a context when prices were increasing dramatically,”
said Riccardo Marchi, an expert on right-wing radicalism at Lisbon’s ISCTE-IUL
Center of International Studies. “And Costa is the face of that model.”
Trouble
in paradise
When
Ventura first appeared on the political scene in 2017, Portugal was enjoying a
renaissance of sorts.
Just five
years prior, the country was on the brink of declaring bankruptcy and was
obliged to seek a €78 billion bailout package. In exchange for the cash,
citizens faced brutal tax hikes and the severe curtailment of public services.
But in 2015, Costa — then the charismatic mayor of Lisbon — cobbled together a
parliamentary alliance of left-wing parties, unseating center-right Prime
Minister Pedro Passos Coelho and forming a minority government that promised to
“turn the page on austerity.”
While
maintaining fiscal discipline, Costa unveiled progressive policies to improve
conditions for the lowest-income citizens and rolled back some of the most
severe cost-cutting measures. The economy steadily improved as existing golden
tourism schemes and new digital nomad visas attracted foreign investment, and
new jobs were created thanks to a successful rebrand that saw the impoverished
Atlantic country recast as a trendy new travel destination. After years of
pessimism, the future looked bright for Portugal, and many saw Costa as a
leader worth emulating.
In that
context, Ventura launched a campaign for local office on behalf of the
center-right Social Democratic Party, and garnered national attention by
running on a platform focused on the alleged threat posed by the Roma
community. Condemned by his own party, Ventura lost the race. But he noted his
rhetoric received more notice — and popular support — than a standard
conservative politician would receive.
Despite
the popularly held belief that far-right sentiment had vanished from Portugal
after the Estado Novo dictatorship ended in 1974, António Costa Pinto, a
political scientist at the University of Lisbon’s Institute of Social Sciences,
said “there’s plenty of data that shows that around 18 percent of the
electorate embraces authoritarian values, but in the past, they either voted
for mainstream conservative parties or didn’t vote at all.”
Focusing
on that dormant electorate’s potential, Ventura left the mainstream
center-right to create Chega — or Enough — ahead of the 2019 European
Parliament elections. He ran on an anti-establishment message, taking on the
persona of a straight-talking common man taking on the country’s out-of-touch
political elites. The tactic failed to win him a seat in Brussels, but when
legislative elections were held later that year, he secured a single seat in
the national parliament — and proved Portugal wasn’t immune to right-wing
populism.
The rise
of Chega
One seat
in parliament is hardly the harbinger of future political dominance, yet
Ventura went from being Chega’s sole elected representative to running the
country’s leading opposition party — and making it to the second round of the
presidential election — in just seven years.
Pedro
Magalhães, an electoral behavior specialist at the University of Lisbon’s
Institute of Social Sciences, links Chega’s growth to the perception that
Portugal’s establishment parties are part of a “failed party system that’s seen
as being frozen and unable to respond to the crises the country faces.”
The
crises that Chega has thrived on developed during Costa’s years in office. One
major issue is the soaring cost of living in major cities like Lisbon and
Porto, which is directly tied to Portugal’s consolidation as an international
destination. Costa’s government took pains to grant residency permits to
foreign celebrities like Madonna in a bid to spur tourism and create
service-sector jobs.
The
tourism economy flourished, but it came at the cost of local residents, who
were ejected from apartments hastily converted into short-term rentals and
priced out of their local tascas. Home prices across the country jumped more
than 124 percent between 2015 and 2025, and the median price-per-square meter
in Lisbon now hovers around €5,914.
“There
are pluses and minuses to tourism, and it’s helped rehabilitate many of our
cities,” said Sérgio Sousa Pinto, a Socialist Party lawmaker who served in the
national parliament from 2011 to 2025. “But that’s not top of mind for a family
that can no longer afford to pay rent.”
As
European Council president, Costa has urged leaders to tackle Europe’s housing
crisis. But during his time as prime minister, he failed to adopt major
policies to expand supply or curb rising costs. For years he denied short-term
rentals were having an impact on home prices, and he only moved to end the
controversial golden visa scheme in 2023.
Frustration
over cost of living has overlapped with anger regarding the state of public
services. As Costa’s government ramped down many austerity measures, it ensured
fiscal stability by keeping public spending in check. But that lack of public
investment has drawn more scrutiny as migration has skyrocketed, with the
number of foreign residents in Portugal jumped from 388,700 in 2015 to 1.5
million in 2024.
Chega has
gained supporters by blaming immigrants for the lackluster public services,
accusing them of overwhelming hospitals and enriching themselves with public
subsidies. “It’s the same stuff he used against the Roma community,” said
Magalhães. “It’s an economically irrational line, but one that plays well with
electors who are frustrated about higher costs and taxes.”
The party
has also made strides by harnessing resentment grounded in the widespread
perception that the country’s political elites are corrupt. Magalhães said
Portugal’s citizens are among the most skeptical in Europe when it comes to the
integrity of its ruling classes. “We once did a survey in which we asked
participants to think of 100 politicians and tell us how many they thought were
corrupt,” he recalled. “On average, respondents said 90 of them were.”
Ventura
has spent years crusading against this alleged rot. And the far-right leader
was finally vindicated in 2023, when police raided the prime minister’s
residence in Lisbon as part of a wide-ranging influence-peddling probe and
arrested Costa’s chief of staff, Vítor Escária, who was found to have €75,800
in undeclared cash stashed in his office. Costa himself was named as a subject
in the investigation, prompting his resignation.
Both
Costa and Escária have always maintained their innocence, and no evidence
linking the former prime minister to any wrongdoing has been revealed. Despite
that, the case that brought down his government remains active, and has
inevitably contributed to Chega’s growth. In the 2024 elections held in the
aftermath of his resignation, the party jumped from 12 to 50 seats. Chega then
grew to 60 seats in 2025’s repeat elections, held after Costa’s successor —
center-right Prime Minister Luís Montenegro — was embroiled in a separate
corruption scandal.
Costa
declined POLITICO’s requests for comment through a spokesperson, who said the
president of the Council has a policy of not discussing national politics.
Leading
the right
When
Costa stood down in 2024, his Socialist Party enjoyed an absolute majority in
parliament. Lawmaker Sousa Pinto believes the government failed to use that
power to carry out the structural reforms that could have addressed the
grievances fueling Chega’s growth.
“Costa’s
tenure leading the Socialist Party is characterized by a lack of imagination,”
he said, adding his last government was composed of “mediocre” figures that
match “a general degradation in the quality of our politicians.”
He also
lamented that as Chega emerged on the scene, the Socialists cast themselves as
the left’s sole legitimate representatives, facing off against an allegedly
uniform right.
“They
pushed the idea that democratic center-right parties were the same thing as one
that’s illiberal,” he said. “That gained traction among many people, and
ultimately helped normalize Chega as an option that’s just as acceptable as any
establishment party.”
Magalhães
expressed doubts that Chega’s assent could be blamed on Costa, arguing the
party’s growth was due to a “mummified” national political landscape. “What we
have today is a better reflection of the diversity of the public’s opinions
than it was in the past — whether we like it or not.”
While
Chega’s electoral base was originally overwhelmingly composed of young men with
little formal education, the ultranationalist group is now becoming “a
catch-all for right-wing voters,” political scientist Costa Pinto explained.
That’s significant in a political landscape that’s been dominated by the right
since Costa’s resignation — something Ventura himself underscored on Sunday.
“We lead
the right-wing space in Portugal,” the far-right leader told supporters. “And
we will soon govern this country.
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