António Luís Santos da Costa GCIH (; born 17 July 1961) is a Portuguese lawyer and politician serving as the 119th and current prime minister of Portugal since 26 November 2015, presiding over the XXI (2015–2019),

XXII 22 (twenty-two) is the natural number following 21 and preceding 23. In mathematics 22 is a palindromic number and the eighth semiprime; its proper divisors are 1, 2, and 11. It is the second Smith number, the second Erdős–Woods numbe ...

(2019–2022) and XXIII Constitutional Governments (2022–present). Previously, he was the 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 The Ministry of Internal Administration ( pt, Ministério da Administração Interna or ''MAI''), is the Portuguese government ministry responsible for the public security, the civil defense, the electoral administration, the road traffic safety ...

from 2005 to 2007, and

mayor of Lisbon This is a list of mayors of Lisbon ( pt, Presidente da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, CML, literally: "President of the Municipal Chamber of Lisbon", and also pt, Presidente do Município de Lisboa, literally: "President of the Municipality of Lisb ...

from 2007 to 2015. He was elected as secretary general of the Socialist Party in September 2014.

Early life and education

Costa was born in 1961 in

São Sebastião da Pedreira São Sebastião da Pedreira (English: '' Saint Sebastian of the Quarry'') was a Portuguese parish (''freguesia'') in the municipality of Lisbon. With the 2012 Administrative Reform, the former ''São Sebastião da Pedreira'' parish merged with the ...

, Lisbon, the son of writer

Orlando da Costa Orlando António Fernandes da Costa (July 1929, Maputo − 27 January 2006) was a Portuguese writer of Goan paternal and Mozambican- French maternal descent whose writings express his experiences of life in Goa. According to Everton Machado, ...

and journalist

Maria Antónia Palla Maria Antónia Palla (born 10 January 1933) is a journalist, writer and feminist who was one of the first female journalists in Portugal. She played an important role in the legalization of abortion in the country, by promoting the practice in in ...

. Costa is half Portuguese and half Goan Portuguese; his father was born in Maputo, Mozambique, to a Goan family. 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 practiced law briefly from 1988, before entering politics full-time.Axel Bugge (4 October 2015)
Portuguese Socialist leader Costa candidate for PM
''

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was est ...

''.

Political career

Costa's first role in a Socialist government was as minister of parliamentary affairs under

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

António Guterres between 1997 and 1999. He was Minister of Justice from 1999 to 2002. Costa was a

member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

for the

Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of ...

( PES), heading the list for the 2004 European elections after the dramatic 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 There are fourteen vice-presidents of the European Parliament who sit in for the president in presiding over the plenary of the European Parliament. Role Vice-presidents are members of the Bureau and chair the plenary when the president is not i ...

. He also served on the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. 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 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. Agence France-Presse (25 November 2015)
Portugal gets Antonio Costa as new PM after election winner only lasted 11 days
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

''.

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 percent of the votes, he defeated party leader

António José Seguro António José Martins Seguro (born 11 March 1962) is a Portuguese politician for the Socialist Party (PS). Seguro was Secretary General of the PS from 2011 until September 2014, and he was the leader of the largest opposition party in the Por ...

, who announced his resignation after the result. By April 2015, he stepped down as mayor to focus on his campaign.Axel Bugge (1 April 2015)
Lisbon Socialist mayor steps down to campaign for Portugal PM
''

''. 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 in order 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

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 constitute a majority in Parliament, and toppled the government on 10 November (the

People–Animals–Nature People–Animals–Nature ( pt, Pessoas-Animais-Natureza, PAN) is an environmentalist, animal rights and animal welfare focused political party in Portugal, founded in 2009. In 2015, they won one seat in the Assembly of the Republic.President Cavaco Silva on 24 November and assumed office on 26 November. By March 2017, polls put support for Costa's Socialists at 42 percent, 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 percent, 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, ''

'' 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 center-right administration during the 2010–13 debt crisis. 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 favored 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. He 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.

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 Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) is a form of permanent residency available to people of Indian origin and their spouses which allows them to live and work in India indefinitely. Despite its name, OCI status is not citizenship and does not gr ...

. Costa is a supporter of S.L. Benfica, being a frequent spectator at their matches whilst Lisbon mayor, as opposed to Sporting Lisbon's. He also accompanied Benfica to both UEFA Europa League finals, in

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fa ...

and

2014 File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wa ...

Awards

Recognition

Civil awards and decorations

PRT Order of Prince Henry - Grand Cross BAR

Grand-Cross of the Order of Prince Henry,

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...

(1 March 2006) * Den kongelige norske fortjenstorden storkors stripe

Grand-Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

(25 September 2009) * EST Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana - 3rd Class BAR

Third Class of the

Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana The Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana ( et, Maarjamaa Risti teenetemärk, sometimes translated as the Order of the Cross of St. Mary's Land) was instituted by the President of Estonia, Lennart Meri, on 16 May 1995 to honour the independence of t ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...

(16 July 2010) * LTU Order for Merits to Lithuania - Grand Cross BAR

Grand-Cross of the Order for Merits to Lithuania, Lithuania (16 July 2010) * CHL Order of Merit of Chile - Grand Cross BAR

Grand-Cross of the Order of Merit,

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

(31 August 2010) *

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great,

Holy See The Holy See ( lat, Sancta Sedes, ; it, Santa Sede ), also called the See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See, is the jurisdiction of the Pope in his role as the bishop of Rome. It includes the apostolic episcopal see of the Diocese of R ...

(3 September 2010) * OPMM-gc

Grand-Cross of the Order pro merito Melitensi,

Sovereign Military Order of Malta The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), officially the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta ( it, Sovrano Militare Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme, di Rodi e di Malta; ...

(23 November 2010) * POL Polonia Restituta Komandorski ZG BAR

Commander's Cross with Star of the

Order of Polonia Restituta The Order of Polonia Restituta ( pl, Order Odrodzenia Polski, en, Order of Restored Poland) is a Polish state order established 4 February 1921. It is conferred on both military and civilians as well as on foreigners for outstanding achievemen ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

(18 July 2012) * BRA Ordem de Rio Branco Comendador BAR

Commander of the

Order of Rio Branco The Order of Rio Branco (''Ordem de Rio Branco'') is an honorific order of Brazil instituted by decree 51.697 of February 5, 1963. It is named in honor of the Brazilian diplomat José Paranhos, Baron of Rio Branco. The President of Brazil serve ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

(19 May 2014) * Second Class (Grand-Cross) of the Order of the Sacred Treasure,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

(16 February 2015) * Commander's Cross with Star of the

Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland The Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland ( pl, Order Zasługi Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej) is a Polish order of merit created in 1974, awarded to persons who have rendered great service to Poland. It is granted to foreigners or Poles resident a ...

(16 February 2015) * 80px Grand-Cross of the Order of Charles III, Spain (25 November 2016): * GRE Order of Honour Grand Cross BAR

Grand-Cross of the Order of Honour,

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...

(21 April 2017)

References

External links

Biography in the Portuguese Government site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Costa, Antonio 1961 births Government ministers of Portugal Portuguese people of French descent Living people Mayors of Lisbon MEPs for Portugal 2004–2009 Portuguese people of Goan descent Portuguese politicians of Indian descent Portuguese people of Mozambican descent Portuguese agnostics Prime Ministers of Portugal Socialist Party (Portugal) MEPs Socialist Party (Portugal) politicians Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 3rd Class Recipients of Pravasi Bharatiya Samman António Costa