Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa – who resigned after a probe and continues to govern until the election in March – can still play a role in European politics, Spanish Prime Minister and Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez said on Tuesday, adding that he believes Costa’s party is still set to win the upcoming elections.
Sánchez, who claims to be “a fan” of Costa, said the Portuguese prime minister Sánchez still has a future in European politics without specifying further.
Sánchez also said that he knew Nuno Santos, recalling that he was a minister and that they had met at Portuguese-Spanish summits and had exchanged messages.
Spain’s prime minister also said he believes PS, led by Pedro Nuno Santos, will win the next legislative elections in Portugal on 10 March.
On 11 November, a few days after Costa’s resignation, Sánchez called his Portuguese counterpart “a great socialist” during a congress of the Socialist Party of Europe (PSE) in Malaga.
“Allow me in my first words in this speech to send a hug on behalf of the European socialist family to a great socialist, a great comrade, António Costa,” Pedro Sánchez told the plenary session of the PES congress.
Sánchez added that “fellow Portuguese socialists know that they can count on the PSOE and all European socialists to win the next elections in Portugal on 10 March”.
Portugal will hold early parliamentary elections on 10 March 2024, as scheduled by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa after Costa’s resignation.
Costa is the subject of an investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) at the Supreme Court after suspects in a case involving lithium, green hydrogen, and a data centre in Sines invoked the prime minister’s name to unblock proceedings.
On the day of his resignation, Costa denied having committed “any illegal or reprehensible act”.
Following Costa’s resignation, the PS elected Nuno Santos as its new general secretary in a primary last weekend.
(Margarida Pinto – edited by Pedro Sousa Carvalho | Lusa.pt)
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