Do we like António Costa?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A solid record on workers, climate and LGBTQ+ gestures, held back by an unresolved inquiry and a recording that opponents say contradicts his own 2023 denial.
Costa spent nearly nine years as Portugal's Socialist prime minister, from 2015 to 2024, and then moved to Brussels as President of the European Council, the person who chairs summits of all the EU's leaders. So he is the bloke running the room when Europe argues about Ukraine, trade and Trump.
His big domestic story is economic repair. His 2019 manifesto promised a 25% minimum wage rise to 750 euros by 2023 and debt below 100% of GDP. Reuters reported that debt had already fallen from a 2014 peak of nearly 131% to just over 119%, and the minimum wage had risen almost 20% in his first term.
The black mark is the 2023 scandal. Prosecutors searched dozens of sites in an inquiry into lithium and green hydrogen deals, detained his chief of staff and a longtime friend of his, and found over 75,000 euros in cash in an office. Costa quit hours later, saying he left with a clear conscience, and Euronews reported he was being investigated over suspected influence peddling. He has denied wrongdoing.
That case is not tidy. Prosecutors confused Costa with his economy minister in a wiretap transcript, and the judge freed the detainees, seeing signs of influence peddling but not corruption. Years on, Costa was named a suspect but has never been made an arguido, a formal defendant, and the file runs past 20,000 pages.
The April 2026 twist is what makes it live again. TVI and CNN Portugal aired a December 2022 call between Costa and Diogo Lacerda Machado, and opposition leaders say it contradicts his 2023 claim that he never spoke with Lacerda Machado about the project. Costa has asked for access to the file and says he doesn't know what's in it. Nothing has been proved either way.
On the harm check, the record is clean as far as we found. On 17 May 2022 he raised the rainbow flag at the prime minister's residence and tweeted a commitment against prejudice. On Trump, he urged calm engagement, then in December 2025 rejected US talk of meddling in European politics. His critics on the left would say the housing crisis under his watch hurt young Portuguese, a policy failure rather than a harm of the kind this page tests.