Antonio
Costa, the controversial Socialist pick for European Council president
Forced to
resign last year as Portuguese prime minister over a corruption scandal,
Antonio Costa has been preliminarily chosen to head the European Council, but
questions remain over his suitability for the post.
Right-wing
leaders said they were concerned about his now tainted reputation, as one of
the reasons to oppose his nomination
Politics
Bárbara
Machado
Euractiv
European
Council meeting in Brussels
Jun 24, 2024 - 06:30
Forced to
resign last year as Portuguese prime minister over a corruption scandal,
Antonio Costa has been preliminarily chosen to head the European Council, but
questions remain over his suitability for the post.
Costa had
long been positioned as a Socialist pick for an EU top job before he resigned
on 7 November 2023 due to a corruption scandal, ‘Operation Influencer’, that
hit the highest echelons of his government.
The case
raised eyebrows among some EU leaders, who voiced concerns over the case just
before the European Council summit on 17 June, and demanded answers from the
Socialists’ top negotiators, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and German
Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
However,
Costa’s name was still floated as a possible candidate ahead of the informal
top-job summit earlier this week.
However,
at the last minute, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the biggest
group in the new European Parliament, raised the issue and cited concern about
Costa’s tainted reputation as a reason to oppose his nomination.
The
Operation Influencer scandal pointed to potential corruption and
influence-peddling in hydrogen and lithium businesses in the country.
It also
involved a project for a data centre, and it led to searches in several
ministries and the official residence of the then-prime minister, as well as to
several arrests, including Costa’s chief of staff after investigators found
€75,800 in his office.
When
Costa resigned a year and a half ago, he seemed to believe his political career
was over, telling a press conference that “I have already resigned as prime
minister, I have already announced that I will not be a candidate for prime
minister and, with the foreseeable duration of this judicial process, I will
not, in all likelihood, hold any more public office”.
Investigations
into Costa continue, but he has not been made a formal suspect.
Costa’s
path to power
Costa
quickly moved from law to socialist politics, making his debut as secretary of
state and then minister for parliamentary affairs in the mid-1990s, then
minister of justice, before leading the Socialist Party’s parliamentary group
in the Assembly of the Republic.
He then
worked briefly as a member of the European Parliament and as a vice president.
After the
short stint in Brussels, he returned to Portugal as minister of internal
administration in the government of former prime minister José Socrates, who
was arrested in 2014 on suspicion of corruption and is still facing trial.
In 2014,
Costa criticised José Seguro, the previous secretary-general of the party, for
winning the European elections by what Costa called “a very small margin” and
applied pressure to hold elections for the post of secretary-general of the
Socialist Party.
After
winning these elections, Costa ran as leader of the socialist party in
Portugal’s 2015 legislative elections but lost.
Crafty
mediation techniques
Even
though Costa lost the 2015 elections, he used his successful negotiation skills
and compromise-building to forge an alliance between opposition parties (the
socialist party, the far-left Communist Party, and the Left Bloc Group), that
would allow him to topple the government in place and take over.
That
year, he became prime minister.
The first
terms of this Costa government were marked by scandal, such as the Tancos arms
theft, which led to the resignation of then-minister of defence Azeredo Lopes.
In 2017, deadly wildfires led to the resignation of then-minister of internal
administration Constança Urbano de Sousa.
Costa’s
government was also marked by the number of government members who were part of
the same family, known as the ‘family gate’.
In 2022, Costa was re-elected as prime
minister with an absolute majority, but in just 16 months, the government
witnessed 13 resignations, including several caused by the national airline
company TAP scandal.
While TAP
was under the authority of the former minister of infrastructure and housing,
Pedro Nuno Santos (current
secretary-general of the Socialist party), TAP gave an illegal €500,000
severance package to a board member who joined the government shortly after.
[Edited
by Aurélie Pugnet/Alice Taylor]
Jun 24,
2024 - 06:30
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