The Unitary Democratic Coalition ( pt, CDU – Coligação Democrática Unitária, PCP–PEV) is an

electoral An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...

and

political coalition This is a list of political groups by country. A political group also known as a political alliance, coalition or bloc, is cooperation by members of different political parties on a common agenda of some kind. This usually involves formal agreem ...

between the

Portuguese Communist Party The Portuguese Communist Party ( pt, Partido Comunista Português, , PCP) is a communist, Marxist–Leninist political party in Portugal based upon democratic centralism. The party also considers itself patriotic and internationalist,Portu ...

( pt, Partido Comunista Português or PCP) and the

Ecologist Party "The Greens" The Ecologist Party "The Greens" ( pt, Partido Ecologista "Os Verdes", , PEV) is a Portuguese eco-socialist political party. It is a member of the European Greens and a founding member of the European Federation of Green Parties. It was the ...

(

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

: Partido Ecologista "Os Verdes" or PEV). The coalition also integrates the political movement Democratic Intervention ( pt, Intervenção Democrática or ID). The coalition was formed for the first time in 1987 in order to run to the simultaneous

legislative election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

and

European Parliament election Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by universal adult suffrage; with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are considered the second largest democratic elections in the world after India's. Unti ...

that were held on July 19 of that year. Since the beginning of the coalition, the member parties have never participated separately in any election. The Communist Party is the major force inside it and has the majority of places in the electoral lists, however, the Greens also have an important presence, for instance, electing 2

members of parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

among the 17 elected by the coalition in the 2015 legislative election. Each party has its own parliamentary group and counts as a separate party in official issues. In the

2022 Portuguese legislative election Early legislative elections were held on 30 January 2022 in Portugal to elect members of the Assembly of the Republic to the 15th Legislature of the Third Portuguese Republic. All 230 seats to the Assembly of the Republic were up for election ...

, the Greens failed to elect any representatives. At a local level, the coalition usually presents lists in almost every municipality and both Communists and Greens may occupy first place on the lists. As the Greens have a smaller structure, the offices of the Communist Party are used as offices of the coalition. The coalition supported the minority Socialist Costa Government (2015–2019) with a

confidence and supply In a parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster system, confidence and supply are required for a ruling cabinet to retain power in the lower house. A confidence-and-supply agreement is one whereby a party or independent members of par ...

agreement.

Symbol

The present symbol of CDU shows the PCP's symbol and the PEV's symbol, a hammer and sickle and a sunflower, respectively, with the respective names below. That symbol replaced a former one that featured three hexagons with the inscription: CDU and was often used with a beehive. That was sometimes said to mean that CDU worked just like a bee (collectively and every day) and the hexagons were meant to represent the cell-based

Leninist Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishm ...

organization of the PCP. File:CDU Portugal 1987.png, Coalition logo in 1987. File:Símbolo CDU (PCP-PEV) (Letras).png, Coalition letters logo. File:PCP-PEV.svg, Current logo of the coalition.

Youth organization

The coalition has a youth wing, called

Juventude CDU Juventude CDU is the youth wing of the Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU) in Portugal. Juventude CDU consists of the Portuguese Communist Youth The Portuguese Communist Youth ( pt, Juventude Comunista Portuguesa or ) is the youth organization of ...

, that develops political work in youth related subjects, along with youth-oriented activities, mainly during the electoral campaigns. The Juventude CDU is mainly composed by members of the youth wings of the parties that compose the CDU, the Portuguese Communist Youth and the Ecolojovem.

Electoral results achieved by CDU

Assembly of the Republic

Vote share in the Portuguese legislative elections

European Parliament

Regional Assemblies

Local elections

References

External links

CDU Official SitePortuguese Communist Party Official Site"The Greens" Official Site
{{Authority control 1987 establishments in Portugal Communist parties in Portugal Ecosocialist parties Left-wing political party alliances Political parties established in 1987 Political party alliances in Portugal Portuguese Communist Party