Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro has been chastised for spending tens of thousands of euros to watch football matches in government buildings. In the land of Eusébio, Cristiano Ronaldo and José Mourinho, politicians are expected to keep track of major football games. But this week eyebrows were raised this week when it was revealed the government had agreed to pay nearly €20,000 for eight premium Sport TV channel subscriptions through August 2028. According to the Correio da Manhã newspaper, a contract negotiated with telecommunications operator NOS last December would allow Sport TV matches to be seen on seven televisions in the Palace of São Bento — the prime minister’s residence — and one in the government’s office suite in the neighboring Portuguese parliament. The high price of the subscriptions, which were reported as the country reels from weeks of devastating storms that have caused millions in damage, generated headlines and prompted criticism of the prime minister. “Deep down, the real problem is this: those who manage state funds — which are paid for by all of us taxpayers — rarely feel the cost of what they spend,” wrote CNN columnist Filipe Santos Costa. “They don’t perceive it as money belonging to the entire community, but as a sum that miraculously exists in the coffers … And this government has been spending a lot!” The general secretariat of the government — the bureaucratic body tasked with coordinating administrative support for Portugal’s executive, and which negotiated the contract — initially downplayed the revelations by pointing out that the state has been paying for eight premium Sport TV subscriptions since 2017, under a plan approved when António Costa — the current president of the European Council — was prime minister. But the price for the service — which includes broadcasts of all Primeira Liga, Europa League and Champions League matches — has increased substantially since then. Whereas the government spent €1,170 per year on the subscriptions last year, the latest contract bound it to pay €7,023 to access the same content in 2026. Montenegro, a well-known supporter of the FC Porto soccer team, on Wednesday ordered the television contract be renegotiated. In a statement, the general secretariat confirmed that the state had reduced the monthly cost for the service from €585 to €146, or around €5,000 in total through 2028. In practice, that means the government will now have access to only two subscriptions — one in the prime minister’s residence and one in the parliament.

Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro is under pressure over his government’s handling of the storms that have wreaked havoc across the country for several weeks. At least 16 people have died as a result of the fierce cyclones that have battered the Atlantic nation since late January, destroying homes and leaving thousands without power for days. A stretch of the A1 motorway that serves as the country’s main north-south artery was wiped out after a dike collapsed this week, and railway service between Lisbon and Porto is suspended. Coimbra, home to one of Europe’s oldest universities, is being threatened by major floods that could force the evacuation of up to 9,000 residents. Growing anger over the lack of preventative measures taken ahead of the storms, as well as the delays in emergency response and recovery operations, prompted Interior Minister Maria Lúcia Amaral to step down on Tuesday. “I no longer possess the personal and political conditions necessary to hold the position,” she wrote in her resignation letter, which President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa promptly accepted. Opposition parties on both sides of the aisle seized on Amaral’s sudden exit to criticize the country’s center-right prime minister. André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party, accused Montenegro of having “lost control of his own government,” while the Socialist Party’s José Luís Carneiro said the resignation proved the administration had “failed in its response to this emergency.” Montenegro himself has provisionally taken up Amaral’s portfolio to oversee the crisis response operations personally. While the move is aimed at underscoring the prime minister’s commitment to addressing the disaster, it is also politically risky, as he is now directly linked to the handling of the calamity. In a bid to calm citizens, Montenegro announced Thursday its government will use EU recovery funds to reconstruct devastated communities, and deliver a new water and forest management plan, he said, that will prepare the country for the extreme weather it will face over the next quarter-century. FRAUD INVESTIGATION But the prime minister’s messaging was undermined on Friday, when he was linked to an ongoing tax fraud probe. According to Portuguese weekly newspaper Expresso, prosecutors have been investigating alleged discrepancies between the cost of Montenegro’s summer house and the invoices issued by his contractors since last fall. Although he has not been named as a subject in the probe, the news is an unpleasant distraction for the prime minister. Montenegro did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment on the investigation. Last year, the prime minister called snap elections after an unrelated corruption probe involving his family’s businesses led to him losing a confidence vote in parliament. That case was ultimately shelved by prosecutors, who found no evidence of criminal activity. The house in question in the latest probe was already the subject of a criminal investigation in 2024, when prosecutors raised doubts over the tax breaks the prime minister had claimed. That case was dropped after authorities concluded Montenegro was legally entitled to the benefits.

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.” Antonio Jose Seguro after his victory in the second round of the Portuguese presidential election. Seguro originally said his decision to run was motivated by his “perplexion” with the direction the country had taken during Costa’s stint as prime minister. | Jose Coelho/EPA 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. Chega leader André Ventura speaks after his defeat in the presidential runoff. He took in a third of the vote thanks to the support of a substantial chunk of the electorate exasperated by issues many link to Costa’s time in office. | Tiago Petinga/EPA 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.

More than 22 percent of Portugal’s 11 million eligible voters defied extreme weather conditions to cast their ballots in the second round of the country’s presidential election as of noon on Sunday, the National Electoral Commission reported. Center-left candidate António José Seguro, who won the first round of the election on Jan. 18, is facing off against far-right leader André Ventura in the first runoff in a presidential election in Portugal in four decades. While polls conducted earlier this month suggested the front-runner could pull off an easy victory, the devastating storms that have hit the Iberian Peninsula over the past two weeks have cast doubt on that outcome. Low turnout could favor Ventura, whose Chega party supporters have proven to be reliable supporters in the last few elections. The ultranationalist group is growing at a remarkable pace and the popularity of its anti-Roma, anti-immigrant and anti-establishment rhetoric has led it to jump from having just one lawmaker in parliament to being the country’s leading opposition party in the span of seven years. At least 14 people have died during, or in the immediate aftermath of, extratropical cyclones Kristin, Leonardo and Marta, which have caused severe flooding from the southern town of Alcoutim to the bustling northern city of Porto, where the Douro River’s waters overflowed into the Ribeira neighborhood. Fierce winds have knocked out the power supply to more than 100,000 homes across the country, and the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere has placed all coastal municipalities under yellow alert. Weather-related interruptions of the country’s public transport networks could complicate voters’ attempts to reach polling stations. Traffic is suspended on Coimbra’s urban railway network and the railway linking Lisbon with seaside suburbs like Estoril and Cascais is operating on a reduced schedule. TO POSTPONE OR NOT TO POSTPONE? Ventura this week called for the runoff to be postponed, insisting the country was “not capable of holding elections in this environment.” Although  19 especially hard-hit municipalities — home to 31,862 voters — have been given permission to delay the vote by one week, polling stations are open everywhere else. Both outgoing President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and the National Electoral Commission insisted postponing the vote nationwide would contravene electoral law. Center-left candidate Seguro on Friday suggested Ventura was attempting to create confusion over the status of the election because he “has many incentives to push for the electoral demobilization of the Portuguese people.” In a televised address on Saturday evening, Rebelo de Sousa once again confirmed the vote was moving forward and urged electors to “overcome the calamity” to cast their ballots. Comparing the current conditions to those experienced when presidential elections were last held in 2021 — in the midst of the Covid pandemic — the outgoing president declared “voting means freedom, voting means democracy, voting means Portugal.” CONSEQUENTIAL VOTE Portugal is a semi-presidential republic in which the president serves as the country’s head of state and has the power to appoint the prime minister and dissolve parliament. The president also has the right to veto laws, ratify international treaties, appoint some members of key state and judicial bodies, and issue pardons. Moreover, as supreme commander of the country’s armed forces, the president wields significant influence on Portuguese military deployments. Although Ventura performed strongly in the first round of voting, his ability to become president has generally been considered unlikely because moderate electors on both sides of the aisle were expected to mobilize to stop him from becoming head of state. The far-right leader has himself hinted that his presidential run is actually meant to gauge support for his eventual candidacy for prime minister. But António Costa Pinto, a political scientist at the University of Lisbon’s Institute of Social Sciences, said if Ventura pulls off a surprise win, the impact on the country’s political landscape would be enormous. “In the unlikely scenario that Ventura secured the presidency, there is little doubt that he would use it to do everything to give his party control of the government,” he said, adding that having the far-right leader as head of state would “pose a serious threat to the institutional functioning of Portuguese democracy.”

LISBON — To stop the explosive growth of the ultranationalist Chega party, Portugal’s leading conservatives are doing the previously unthinkable: endorsing the center-left candidate for president. Last week, Portugal’s prominent center-right politicians are publicly backing António José Seguro — a former secretary general of the Socialist Party — in the runoff presidential election on Feb. 8. The conservative endorsement is a collective rejection of the opposing candidate, far-right Chega leader André Ventura, who was the runner-up in the first round of voting in January. Although current polls indicate Ventura has no real possibility of winning the second round, the conservatives publicly backing Seguro say they’re doing so to underscore the center-right’s commitment to democratic values. Those who have spoken out include former President and Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, former Deputy Prime Minister Paulo Portas, as well as former European Commissioner for Research and current Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas. Thousands of electors have also signed an open letter of support for Seguro, which was issued by a group of self-declared “non-socialist” public figures. Ventura secured nearly a quarter of the ballots in the first round of voting, and his performance highlights Chega’s remarkable ascent. By campaigning against minority groups such as the Roma community, increased immigration and denouncing government corruption, the ultranationalist group has gone from having just one lawmaker in parliament to being the country’s leading opposition party in just six years. “We have to draw a red line between liberal and illiberal forces,” said political consultant Henrique Burnay, a signatory of the open letter backing Seguro. “And my center-right democratic and liberal values have no connection with the positions the radical right defends.” André Ventura secured nearly a quarter of the ballots in the first round of voting, and his performance highlights Chega’s remarkable ascent. | Zed Jameson/Anadolu via Getty Images This is a clear choice between “a candidate for whom I may not feel enthusiasm, and one who is bent on polarizing the public, unilaterally deciding who are good or bad citizens, and who earnestly worries me,” he said. Luís Marques Mendes, who ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign on behalf of the governing center-right Social Democratic Party, said he would also commit his vote to Seguro because “he is the only candidate who comes close to the values I have always defended: defense of democracy, guaranteeing space for moderation, respect for the purpose of representing all Portuguese people.” PRIME MINISTER UNDER PRESSURE The avalanche of conservative support for Seguro is a source of discomfort for Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, who is declining to endorse either candidate in the presidential runoff. During a session of the Portuguese parliament, lawmakers lambasted the center-right leader for failing to choose between “a democrat” and someone who wants to “end the democratic regime.” The country’s political analysts interpret the prime minister’s refusal to back Seguro as a tactical decision aimed at not alienating the most conservative wing of his party, which would consider any support for a former socialist leader unacceptable. João Cotrim de Figueiredo, one of the most prominent figures in the economically liberal Liberal Initiative party, was similarly criticized for not explicitly backing the center-left candidate. Last week, however, he tacitly admitted he would vote for Seguro by declaring he’d neither cast a ballot for Ventura nor abstain from voting — a pragmatic approach, as his party’s voter base is made up of right-leaning young men who could defect to Chega. The avalanche of conservative support for António José Seguro is now a source of discomfort for Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, who is declining to endorse either candidate in the presidential runoff. | Rita Franca/LightRocket via Getty Images According to António Costa Pinto, a political scientist at the University of Lisbon’s Institute of Social Sciences, the center-right’s decision to mobilize against Ventura makes sense because of the power accorded to the president, who can veto laws, appoint members of key state and judicial bodies, and dissolve parliament. “In the unlikely scenario that Ventura secured the presidency, there is little doubt that he would use it to do everything to give his party control of the government … and pose a serious threat to the institutional functioning of Portuguese democracy,” he said. But, Costa Pinto explained, the conservatives’ decision to publicly back Seguro could end up paradoxically benefiting Ventura, as he will likely use their endorsements to reaffirm his claim that the country’s center-right and center-left parties are virtually identical mainstream entities. “This allows Ventura to reinforce his image as an anti-establishment leader who represents the people and fights the elites,” he said. “As long as he obtains between 35 and 40 percent of the vote when the runoff is held — which is to say, more than the 32 percent Prime Minister Luís Montenegro secured in last year’s parliamentary elections — he’ll also be able to claim he’s the true leader of the Portuguese right.”

European Council President António Costa intends to summon EU leaders to an informal retreat in rural Belgium next February to discuss Europe’s competitiveness. The meeting of the bloc’s heads of state and government will take place on Feb. 12 at Alden Biesen Castle, a XVI century moated complex in the eastern Belgian region of Limburg, Costa said in an interview with Portuguese daily Expresso. The informal summit on competitiveness will take place just a few months after the leaders debated the European Commission’s proposal to foster a pan-European industrial revival by merging cash for research, defense and innovation in the EU’s 2028-2035 budget. Shortly before taking office a year ago, the Council president said he wanted to organize periodic, informal meetings of EU leaders where they could discuss broad, strategic topics without the need to reach definitive conclusions. The objective was to create space for the kinds of debates that regularly derailed official summits chaired by Costa’s predecessor, Charles Michel. Although Costa wanted to hold the retreats outside the Belgian capital, security concerns obliged him to hold the first of these events in Brussels’ central Egmont Palace last February. During that session, EU leaders discussed issues related to the wider topic of European defense. Last week the bloc’s leaders attended an informal meeting in Luanda, Angola, where talks focused on the ongoing efforts to secure a lasting peace in Ukraine. During the wide-ranging interview with Expresso, which marked his first year in the Council presidency, Costa said the greatest challenge he has faced was that of stabilizing relations between the EU and U.S. President Donald Trump. That goal, he said, had been achieved, but he acknowledged that the dynamics between Brussels and Washington are “different” than they once were. Costa said it was essential for the EU to “remain calm, serene, and continue to strive to be constructive” when dealing with Trump, and noted that the relationship between Brussels and Washington is not “between equals.” The EU, he noted, is made up of 27 member countries “each with its own policies and interests,” while the U.S. operates as a single, federal entity.

Five months ago, Portugal’s snap national election saw the far-right Chega party become the second-largest force in the country’s parliament. On Sunday, 9.3 million Lusitanian voters are headed back to the polls, this time for nationwide local elections. The race is set to be a nail-biter, with the top candidates in the big cities of Lisbon and Porto tied in the polls. Meanwhile, the far right is poised to make major advances in the country’s neglected southern and interior regions, where voters are increasingly backing the party’s antiestablishment and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Though boasting lawmakers in both the Portuguese and European parliaments, Chega has yet to conquer any city halls. Sunday’s elections could be decisive in expanding the far-right party’s presence beyond Lisbon and Brussels. They may also underscore a European trend of extremist forces consolidating power, campaigning on mainstream politicians’ inability to tackle issues like the bloc-wide housing crisis. IT’S THE HOUSING CRISIS, STUPID Indeed, the top issue in every Portuguese city — no matter its size or location — is the high cost of housing. The problem is particularly critical in Lisbon, where average home prices have shot up by nearly 80 percent over the last five years and are currently hovering at €5,769 per square meter. Incumbent Mayor Carlos Moedas — a former European commissioner — has sought to justify his tenure by drawing attention to the 2,881 families his administration provided with new homes, but unimpressed critics estimate 150,000 homes are needed. Moedas has also been criticized for not doing enough to stop locals from being displaced by wealthy tourists. His challenger, Socialist Party candidate Alexandra Leitão, has made tackling excessive tourism a top priority, and is promising to crack down on short-term rentals and impose a moratorium on new hotels until the city can devise a plan to deal with the challenge.  The two are currently neck and neck in the polls, but one issue that could break the tie is discontent over the mayor’s handling of last month’s deadly funicular disaster. This week, victims’ families complained that no one from City Hall had reached out to them since the catastrophe, and Moedas is under fire for his controversial decision to delay any hearings regarding the accident until after the elections. In Portugal’s second-largest city, Sunday’s election marks the first time center-right Mayor Rui Moreira won’t be on the ballot in 12 years. | Pool photo by Estela Silva/EPA Even if he isn’t punished by voters, the crash could still complicate his path to a second term: The mayor isn’t expected to secure a governing majority, and his ability to form either a minority or coalition government will hinge on Chega’s support. Given that the far-right party’s lead candidate Bruno Mascarenhas brought an unsuccessful censure motion against Moedas for his response to the disaster, negotiations could prove tricky. MEANWHILE, IN PORTO … In Portugal’s second-largest city, Sunday’s election marks the first time center-right Mayor Rui Moreira won’t be on the ballot in 12 years. Instead, conservative Pedro Duarte is and former Member of the European Parliament and Socialist Party candidate Manuel Pizarro are locked in a tight race that is similarly dominated by the housing crisis. Duarte wants to use tax breaks to goad the owners of the city’s 20,000 vacant homes to rent them out at affordable prices, but Pizarro argues his own plan to build 5,000 affordable homes on municipal land could be implemented much faster. Duarte also has a radical proposal to raise the tourist tax to make public transport free for all city residents — but Pizarro’s counterplan to slash the speed limit on Porto’s innermost ring road could prove more controversial. With neither candidate expected to secure a governing majority, Chega may ultimately determine the winning vision. BEYOND THE BIGGEST CITIES As the most-voted party in 60 cities in last May’s snap national election, Chega’s candidates are now poised to enjoy similar success in many of those municipalities. Polls indicate far-right influencer and MP Rita Matias is in a three-way tie to govern Sintra, Portugal’s second-most populous municipality, where housing prices are increasing due to growing demand from displaced Lisbon residents. Chega’s candidates have even greater odds of winning Elvas, a former fortress city on the Spanish border, and semirural communities like Viana do Alentejo and Benavente. The problem is particularly critical in Lisbon, where average home prices have shot up by nearly 80 percent over the last five years and are currently hovering at €5,769 per square meter. | Jorge Castellanos/Getty Images But the far-right party is most focused on the Algarve region, where locals are struggling to balance the country’s lowest average wages with a steadily increasing cost of living due to the presence of foreign tourists and retirees. By promoting the narrative that seasonal migrants are to blame for local woes, Chega has gained traction among southern electors who feel abandoned by the hyper-centralized Portuguese state. And while the latest polls still suggest conventional parties will stave off Chega’s bid to take Faro, the far right could win in other southern cities and gain enough council seats to make some municipalities virtually ungovernable.  Polls will close on the Portuguese mainland at 8 p.m. GMT, with exit poll projections published an hour later, when voting ends in the Azores archipelago. The country’s electoral system is remarkably efficient, so a final tally is expected before midnight.

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor and a foreign affairs columnist at POLITICO Europe. “I don’t know what happened,” said French economist Jean Pisani-Ferry recently, lamenting President Emmanuel Macron’s unraveling grand centrist project. His bewilderment is shared by disoriented centrists across the continent, all wondering how the ground has yielded under their feet as the tectonic plates of European politics continue to relentlessly shift, throwing the familiar into disarray. But could this be the point of no return? The first of the latest tremors was the political comeback of Czech populist billionaire Andrej Babiš, a self-proclaimed Trumpist and Euroskeptic agitator. His ANO party grabbed 35 percent of the vote in the country’s parliamentary elections last Sunday, leaving Petr Fiala’s pro-Western coalition behind at 23 percent. Though falling short of an overall majority, Babiš — who lambasted the current center-right government for giving “Czech mothers nothing, and Ukrainians everything” — will no doubt relish teaming up with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and the far-right parties of the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament to disrupt any centrist “more Europe” policies. And seeking to tug the country away from supporting Ukraine, he has already pledged to scrap Czech ammunition supplies to Kyiv. Then, on Monday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu resigned just hours after appointing a cabinet, plunging the country deeper into a political quagmire with its fractious parliament and lame-duck president in a political system designed by Charles de Gaulle for a powerful head of state. Macron has appointed and lost five prime ministers in two years and is still floundering. Could we be seeing the death throes of the Fifth Republic? At the end of the week, there will likely be more bad news for centrists in Portugal as well. Chega, the party of “God, fatherland and family” that in May became the official opposition, is set to do well in the country’s local elections — a harbinger of things to come. These are indeed heady, giddy times for national-conservative populists — and they’re celebrating as their rivals remain confounded. The outcome of the Czech election prompted the top populist leaders from across the continent to take to social media — including Orbán, Denmark’s Anders Vistisen, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, Austria’s Harald Vilimsky, France’s Marine Le Pen and Italy’s Matteo Salvini. “All across Europe, patriotic parties are being called to power by the people, who long to reclaim their freedom and prosperity!” Le Pen posted on X. But how did we get here? In the summer of 2024, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had crowed the “center is holding.” Following European Parliament elections that saw right-wing populists and national conservatives make serious inroads but fall short of the huge surge they were expecting, it seemed voters still largely backed centrists. The first of the latest tremors was the political comeback of Czech populist billionaire Andrej Babiš, a self-proclaimed Trumpist and Euroskeptic agitator. | Martin Divisek/EPA But von der Leyen was being complacent — a common characteristic of mainstream centrists from both the left and right since Brexit and U.S. President Donald Trump’s first election in 2016. Centrists were too quick to dismiss both Brexit and Trump’s first term as aberrations. The world would right itself, they said. Even as late as 2023, the Global Progress Action Summit in Montreal — a gathering of center-left politicians — saw boisterous talk of another possible “progressive moment,” with the Third Way politics shaped by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former U.S. President Bill Clinton a quarter-century ago cited as an example. But since those first populist shifts, the centrist crack-up has grown more apparent to everyone else. The British Labour Party’s general election win in 2024 was an outlier — testimony to the unpopularity of the Conservatives rather than an embrace of Prime Minister Keir Starmer or an indication of a political trend. And U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2020 win seemed more like a pause in the crumbling of the ancien régime. Meanwhile, centrists on both the left and right have made too many excuses, without nearly enough rigorous self-analysis or readiness to challenge group-think or shibboleths. Instead, they’ve muttered about “deplorables” and blamed their setbacks on populists weaponizing issues like net zero, immigration, cultural disorientation, identity anxieties and the cost-of-living squeeze. They’ve easily reached for Russian disinformation and demagogic manipulation to explain away their misfortunes — talking almost as though the here-and-now challenges and fears faced by ordinary families are made up or overblown. And they haven’t been able to ease the nagging widespread sense that the West is in a doom-loop of structural decline and lacks the political will to correct. Centrists have consistently failed to understand that the jolts taking place under their feet were forewarnings of even bigger political earthquakes to come as the world changed. Now demoralized, either too laggardly to rethink policies or too quick to dress themselves in populist clothes — as Starmer’s Labour government is now trying to do with tougher immigration rules — more cracks are surely to come. Why vote for copycats when you can vote for the real thing? In Germany, for example, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s asylum crackdown has done nothing to stem the rising popularity of the hard-right Alternative for Germany party — at least in opinion polls. Merz’s approval ratings are dismal this month, with 70 percent of Germans unhappy with his performance. So are national conservatives now unstoppable? Maybe so, until the tectonic plates settle. Or at least until they’re exposed as having no real answers to the immense challenges of Europe’s anemic economic growth, poor competitiveness and massive public debt.

In a bid to force Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas to step down after last week’s deadly funicular disaster, Portuguese lawmakers are using the politician’s own words against him. Sixteen people died when the iconic Glória Funicular’s suspension cable snapped last Wednesday, causing one of its tram cars to plummet down a steep slope and smash into a building. Following the catastrophe, leading politicians are claiming the city failed to adequately maintain its 140-year old railway system, and are evoking Moedas’ past statements in an attempt to push for his resignation. In 2021, Moedas’ predecessor Fernando Medina came under fire when his administration admitted to giving Russian authorities the personal information of at least three Lisbon-based Russian dissidents. Moedas — at the time a former European commissioner running as the center-right candidate in the local elections — had slammed the incumbent mayor, saying he had to take responsibility for the scandal. “City hall put these people in mortal danger,” he told POLITICO. “There have to be political consequences: Medina has to resign.” Now, with less than a month before Lisbon’s local elections, Moedas’ political opponents are citing his words from four years ago and demanding he take responsibility for the funicular disaster. “What would the Moedas of 2021 say to the Moedas of 2025?” asked André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party. “Serious politicians do not hide in times of crisis and do not shirk their responsibility: They assume it.” On the opposite side of the political spectrum, Secretary-General of the Portuguese Communist Party Paulo Raimundo also said Moedas’ own standards mean he’s no longer qualified to lead the city. The Socialist Party’s parliamentary leader Eurico Brilhante Dias similarly called for the mayor to be “coherent.” In an interview with POLITICO, Moedas insisted the funicular disaster couldn’t be compared to the scandal that embroiled his predecessor. While Medina had “direct responsibility” over the municipal employees who shared dissidents’ personal information, he argued last week’s accident wasn’t “attributable to a decision made by the mayor.” ASSIGNING BLAME A preliminary report released by Portugal’s transit safety authority this weekend attributes the crash to mechanical failure and rejects the possibility that human error played a role in the tragedy. Moedas’ critics say the findings raise serious questions about the historic funicular’s upkeep. In the aftermath of the disaster, employees of Lisbon’s Carris public transit authority said they spent years raising concerns about the funicular’s maintenance, which is subcontracted to private companies. They argued experienced in-house municipal engineers are better equipped to deal with the city’s aged infrastructure. Moedas told POLITICO the companies overseeing the maintenance have to “meet very strict specifications” and are monitored by Carris technicians who “reviewed and adapted all maintenance plans in accordance with necessary developments and changing realities.” He also declined to take responsibility for the outsourcing, which was decided in 2006, and insisted his administration hadn’t cut Carris’ operating budget. Moedas’ assertions don’t appear to have swayed Chega’s mayoral candidate Bruno Mascarenhas though, who is set to present a censure motion against the mayor on Tuesday. “The maximum representative of Carris, [the mayor] has to take responsibility,” Mascarenhas declared. Carlos Moedas insisted the funicular disaster couldn’t be compared to the scandal that embroiled his predecessor. | Horacio Villabos/Getty Images The mayor dismissed the censure motion as grandstanding ahead of the local elections. “This case has brought out the worst in politics and political exploitation,” he said, noting that the proposed motion would be nonbinding. Wary of being seen as playing politics with the tragedy, Socialist candidate Alexandra Leitão — who is polling neck and neck with Moedas — has yet to call for her rival’s resignation, insisting that it’s “premature” to make a political assessment. But on Monday, she urged Moedas to be more transparent about what went wrong. “The preliminary report shows that the safety system was insufficient, and that the technical inspections failed to detect the problems that eventually occurred,” she told supporters. “Something needs to change.”