António Costa

António Luís Santos da Costa GCC GCIH (

Portuguese: [ɐ̃ˈtɔnju ˈkɔʃtɐ]; born 17 July 1961) is a Portuguese lawyer and politician who has served as President of the European Council since 2024. He previously served as the 118th Prime Minister of Portugal from 2015 to 2024, presiding over the XXI (2015–2019), XXII (2019–2022) and XXIII Constitutional Governments (2022–2024).

Born in Lisbon, Costa was Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs from 1995 to 1997, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs from 1997 to 1999, Minister of Justice from 1999 to 2002, Minister of Internal Administration from 2005 to 2007, as well as Mayor of Lisbon from 2007 to 2015.

Costa was elected Secretary-General of the Socialist Party in 2014, a post he held until early 2024. Costa's near 9-year tenure as Prime Minister is the second longest, with Costa also being the longest serving politician in government functions, in Portuguese democracy, and the longest of any Iberian Peninsula national leader in the 21st century. On 7 November 2023, Costa resigned following an investigation involving members of his government in connection with alleged corruption and malfeasance in handling lithium mining and hydrogen projects in the country. The President of Portugal decided to dissolve Parliament and called for a snap election. Costa stayed as Prime Minister in a caretaker capacity until 2 April 2024 when he was succeeded by Luís Montenegro.

In December 2024 Costa succeeded Charles Michel as President of the European Council. As President of the European Council, Costa reaffirmed support for Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Early life and education

António Luís Santos da Costa was born on 17 July 1961 in Lisbon, Portugal, the son of writer Orlando da Costa and journalist Maria Antónia Palla. He is of Portuguese and Goan descent. In Goa, Costa is affectionately known as Babush, a word in Konkani meaning 'a young loved one'.

Costa graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon in the 1980s when he first entered politics and was elected as a Socialist deputy to the municipal council. He completed the mandatory military service in 1987 and later practised law briefly from 1988, before entering politics full-time.

Political career

António Costa joined the Socialist Youth in 1975, at the age of fourteen. In the 1982 local elections, Costa was elected as a member of the Lisbon municipal assembly, being re-elected in 1985 and 1989. In the 1991 legislative election, Costa was elected as member of the Assembly of the Republic from the district of Lisbon.

For the 1993 local elections, Costa was picked as the mayoral candidate for the municipality of Loures, a suburb of Lisbon. This contest threw national attention because Costa did a campaign stunt by promoting a race between a Ferrari and a Donkey to highlight the difficulty in roads and transportation to Lisbon, and to point for the necessity of better roads and a subway connection to Loures. Costa narrowly lost the mayoral race to the Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU) candidate by a 35 to 34 percent margin.

In the 1996 presidential election, António Costa was the campaign director of Jorge Sampaio's successful run for the Presidency of the Republic. Costa's first role in a Socialist government was as Minister of Parliamentary Affairs under Prime Minister António Guterres between 1997 and 1999. In Guterres' second term, Costa held the office of Minister of Justice from 1999 to 2002. Costa also coordinated the organization of the Expo '98 in Lisbon.

In the 2002 legislative election, Costa was elected a member of parliament from the district of Leiria and, due the defeat of the PS in this election, became the party's parliamentary leader in opposition. During the 2003 Casa Pia child sexual abuse scandal, António Costa's name was involved in wiretaps where he appears to want to interfere with the Public Prosecutor's Office to avoid the arrest of the PS deputy Paulo Pedroso. Costa was a member of the European Parliament for the Socialist Party (Party of European Socialists), heading the list for the 2004 European elections after the death of top candidate António 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. Costa would remain a member of the Party of European Socialists (PES) coalition.

Costa resigned as an MEP on 11 March 2005 to become Minister of State and Internal Administration in the government of José Sócrates following the 2005 national elections.

Mayor of Lisbon

António Costa resigned from 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.

Candidate for prime minister

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 per cent of the votes, he defeated party leader António José Seguro, who announced his resignation after the result. By April 2015, he stepped down as mayor to focus on his campaign.

During the campaign, Costa pledged to ease back on austerity and give more disposable income back to households. He proposed to boost incomes, hiring and growth 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. Also, he pledged to roll back a hugely unpopular hike in value added tax on restaurants and reinstate some benefits for civil servants.

Prime Minister of Portugal

First term (2015–2019)

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 António 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.

By March 2017, polls put support for Costa's Socialists at 42 per cent, 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. 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 per cent, again up from their result in the 2015 parliamentary election.

During his tenure, Portugal experienced its deadliest wildfires ever, firstly in Pedrogão Grande in June 2017 (65 dead) and later across the country in October 2017 (41 dead). 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.

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 centre-right administration during the 2010–13 debt crisis. Various reforms were also carred out during Costa’s first term in office, including social protection for children, free books for all students up until the age of 18, far cheaper public transport tickets, and a social electricity price; with lower bills for low-income families.

In early 2019, Costa's government survived another opposition motion of no confidence lodged over a wave of public sector strikes. 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 favoured 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.

Second term (2019–2022)

Costa's second government was sworn in on 26 October 2019, the biggest government in Portuguese democracy, with 70 members: 20 ministers, including the Prime Minister, and 50 secretaries of state. 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.

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. 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. 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.

Between 1 January and 30 June 2021, António Costa presided over the Council of the European Union. In the 2021 local elections, the Socialist Party remained the largest party in the country but suffered heavy losses in several cities, especially Lisbon which was lost to a centre-right coalition. The results were seen as a "yellow card" to António Costa. 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. 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. Snap elections were called for 30 January 2022.

Further reforms were carried out durng Costa’s second term, including a new housing and urban planning law, the extension of free early childhood education and care to all vulnerable children, extended bereavement leave, and a duty on employers “to refrain from contacting employees outside regular working hours.”

Third term (2022–2024)

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". This gave him the mandate to form the XXIII Constitutional Government of Portugal.

During Costa’s third term, several amendments to the country’s Labour Code were carried out. However, his third term was marred by a wave of scandals and resignations that affected his popularity negatively in the opinion polls. 11 ministers and secretaries of state left their roles, over allegations of corruption and past misconduct or questionable practices. 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.

Costa replaced Santos with João 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 Ourmières-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.

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. 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. 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.

Resignation

On 7 November 2023, Portuguese prosecutors detained Costa's chief of staff Vítor Escária and named João Galamba a formal suspect 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 Escária's office, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Action. Costa was also under suspicion of enabling the lithium and green hydrogen deals, and was to be inquired by the Supreme Court of Justice.

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".

The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, accepted Costa's resignation on the same day. However, the resignation of Costa and his government was only made official on 8 December, 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.

The investigation has since attracted criticism after the prosecutors admitted several mistakes, including confusion between the names of António Costa and then Minister of Economy António Costa Silva in the transcript of a wiretap.

Costa would become the longest-serving Portuguese prime minister during Portuguese democracy. He served as head of government longer than any other Iberian Peninsula national leader in the 21st century.

President of the European Council

In the aftermath of the 2024 European Parliament election, Costa was seen as the frontrunner candidate for the Presidency of the European Council. On 27 June 2024, António Costa was elected as President of the European Council, one of the three most important leadership posts of the European Union, by the 27 EU member state leaders. He started in the position on 1 December 2024.

As President of the European Council, Costa reaffirmed support for the Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the third anniversary of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In March 2025, Costa met in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Personal life

In 1987, Costa married Fernanda Maria Gonçalves Tadeu, a teacher. The couple have a son and a daughter. Costa also holds an Overseas Citizenship of India.

Costa is a supporter of the football club S.L. Benfica, and was a frequent spectator at their matches while mayor of Lisbon. He also accompanied Benfica to both UEFA Europa League finals, in 2013 and 2014.