Is Portugal taking the European elections seriously?

Since 2020, the party has been linked with the Identity and Democracy (ID) grouping in the European Parliament. This includes Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN). However, Chega’s lead candidate, the retired diplomat António Tânger Corrêa, said last week that it would decide which group to join only after the election. 

Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland has recently been expelled from the ID group over pro-Nazi comments by party officials. With them gone, there is now talk of a merger between ID and the other main grouping on the right, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). 

In the past, André Ventura has even suggested that Chega could serve as a “bridge” between the two.

Meanwhile, Portugal’s Socialist Party (PS) could lose one or more of its nine seats in the European Parliament and the governing Democratic Alliance (AD) coalition is not expected to add more than one seat to its current seven.

The prime minister, Luís Montenegro, despite his coalition lacking a majority in Portugal’s parliament, has insisted that “no means no” when it comes to a deal with Chega. But it is unclear what this principle will mean at EU level.

Ukraine may be a source of tension between parties on the right across Europe, but in Portugal there is a broad consensus that includes Chega. It supports military aid to the country. The Ukraine-sceptic stance of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), by contrast, may have contributed to the slump in its vote in the legislative elections, and it could lose both its MEPs.

The election debates so far have focussed mainly on divisive issues such as migration. The AD’s lead candidate is Sebastião Bugalho, a 28-year-old political commentator with a huge online profile thanks to short videos posted by the TV channel that employed him having received millions of views. Bugalho has said that some aspects of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum are so bad that he would seek to amend it. Mechanisms for dealing with legal immigration are, he said, “too unambitious”.

Chega rejects the pact outright: its campaign slogan “Europe needs a clean-up” refers not only to corruption but also to large-scale economic migration. It demands “effective repatriation policies” to deal with irregular migrants.

Socialist lead candidate Marta Temido, a former health minister, has also criticised elements of the pact, but sought to shift the debate towards economic policy. Brushing aside criticism from the far left of renewed EU fiscal restrictions for highly indebted member states such as Portugal, she highlighted the European Central Bank’s scope for action.

“More than discussing these rules, we should discuss what we think about economic policies for Europe – in particular the role of the ECB,” she said.

Still, with these elections just three months after Portugal’s indecisive legislative vote, and with another snap election seen as likely within a year, observers are looking for pointers for domestic politics. And there are signs that Chega’s rise may not be irresistible. 

Polls put the party no higher than the 18% it secured in March, and some put its vote well below that. And with the Socialists back in the lead, just months after losing power, the focus will pivot swiftly back to the possibility of another change of government in Lisbon.

But whatever the results, with the parties having chosen lead candidates with little or no EU-level experience, Portugal’s clout in the European Parliament could be reduced.

Alison Roberts is a journalist based in Lisbon, currently freelance correspondent for BBC News