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The Brussels bubble has been expressing its great comfort with the choice of António Costa for the presidency of the European Council. They are correct: Costa could not be a better choice of personality to advance the deep (supranational) state agenda.
Costa is a consummate politician who never saw the need to have a career outside of politics. He started in the Socialist Party (PS) youth league, became a local councilman, and eventually rose to ministerial positions in the 1990s. As much as one would like to inform on the substance of the policies pursued by him as minister, there is nothing really noteworthy in the least. The only relevant observation to make is that Costa was always able to elevate himself, irrespective of the PS faction in power.
In Portugal, his name became infamous in the early 2000s, when he was caught in a police wiretap attempting to pressure the prosecutor-general to prevent the arrest of a fellow socialist MP on accusations of paedophilia, in the context of an historical investigation into child sexual abuse at a state-run orphanage.
After brief stints in the European Parliament, and in the government as justice minister, Costa was elected mayor of Lisbon for two terms. His rule coincided with the austerity crisis, but also with the Troika-bound centre-right government’s deregulation measures, which would eventually transform Lisbon into a fashionable tourist city. Among Costa’s legacy are the many cycling paths, which seem only to be used by delivery services, since the average person is not overly enthusiastic about cycling in the ‘city of the seven hills.’ He also worked to establish the Web Summit in Lisbon (with considerable subsidisation). Financially, he prided himself in having reduced the €1 billion municipal debt; however, the ‘reduction’ was achieved by transferring a small part of the debt to the national government, through a direct sale of real estate—not by cost cutting measures.
During his mayoral tenure, he simultaneously became a television pundit in a long-running cable network political commentary show. There, he used his position as a senior PS figure to run cover for the PS government of PM Sócrates. After implementing neo-Keynesian anti-austerity policies to deal with the Great Recession crisis, that PS government faced bankruptcy and requested a bailout from the Troika. Sócrates himself was later arrested on corruption charges. Such eventualities attest to the accuracy and honesty of Costa’s commentary on the programme.
In 2014, after breaking both his pledge to see out his Lisbon mandate to the very end, and his promise not to contest the recently elected PS leadership, Costa ran for leadership of the Socialist Party. He won, making him eligible to compete in the national elections of 2015. With such a stellar resumé of non-achievements, he duly lost the election to the centre-right coalition, which was accordingly given a mandate by the president to form a government. Normally, that would have been the end of a PS leader’s hopes for high office—but not with António Costa. Instead, he opted to break the tradition (dating back to the Revolution of 1974) of keeping totalitarian parties away from government and joined the communist and Trotskyist parties in a parliamentary alliance to block the approval of the centre-right majority government’s budget proposal, leading to the government’s quick collapse. Consequently, Costa finally became PM.
As PM, Costa basically operated as he did when he was mayor of Lisbon. He pretended on one hand to ‘end austerity’ by unfreezing career progression and salaries for civil servants; but he simultaneously maintained or increased the burdensome taxation for the private sector and the citizenry. In the end, the public debt to GDP ratio—of over 100%—remained unchanged.
Because he had to contest the PS leadership on a moment’s notice and subsequently had been forced to ally with the extreme Left in parliament, Costa needed to placate his allies of convenience with bold leftist policies. To this effect, he had promised the renationalisation of the Portuguese airlines (TAP) as well as reinvestment in the national infrastructure network. In the domain of education, for instance, he promoted to minister an apparatchik who had made a name for himself by persecuting a conservative family who were seeking to keep their children away from gender ideology—even going to the extreme of denouncing the family to social services as an intimidation tactic, and only backing out when the media attention became too hot to handle.
By 2024, the two ministers appointed to oversee the revolutionary infrastructure policies had both been forced to resign in disgrace from the same ministry, and after financial losses in the billions, with TAP having to be reprivatised after all. Costa only presented his resignation upon being implicated in a corruption probe into his government, during which searches found envelopes containing tens of thousands of euros in cash, amongst wine cases and bookshelves of the office of Costa’s chief of staff. Rumours of António Costa’s desire to take a European job had circulated for years prior.
As an electoral tactic, Costa once again broke democratic tradition by not appointing someone consensual to head the Portuguese parliament, and by instead choosing some of the most aggressive and sectarian socialists. Under their tutelage, the new right-wing CHEGA! party (CH) was regularly attacked, humiliated, and discriminated against to the extent of preventing it—as well as the new liberal party—from duly electing a parliamentary vice president, as the third and fourth biggest parties were supposed to do, in 2022. The goal was to provide CH with disproportionate media coverage so as to prop it up with right-wing voters, while at the same time conditioning the centrist PSD away from allying with it, and thereby becoming isolated. The tactic worked wonders in preventing PSD from achieving an absolute majority in its early 2024 victory, but it also backfired by delivering a quarter of a million votes to CH from former socialist voters, propelling it to a staggering 18% of the vote this year.
As Council president, one can see that the former Portuguese PM has revealed a certain talent in ingratiating himself with different factions, which could prove useful in finding consensus within the Council. He has no interest in genuine reform, which could also facilitate stability (albeit only as much as it could foster incompetent inertia). That being said, his unusual cowardice and lack of scruples in the pursuit of personal gains could lead him to normalise extremist policies without so much as an afterthought.
António Costa rules for the moment and cares little for consequences. He will not hesitate to promote censorship if pushed to do so by eurocrats, or to argue for war if pushed to do so by influential actors. He will be perfectly comfortable discriminating against contrarian governments and ostracising them, if the mood in Brussels calls for it.
While Costa himself will not be the source of radical ideas, he will not hesitate to adopt them if it suits his goals and allegiances. Most of all, Costa can never be expected to be a voice of reason or a statesman with a vision. The worst instincts of eurocrats will resonate with him if he sees it as personally advantageous. He cannot be expected to lead any effort in treaties change or enlargement policy if there is no personal benefit to be gained.
António Costa is nothing more than an empty vessel suited for the sterile optics of the political moment—an object lesson in the banality of evil.
