Less parity, more deputies repeating their mandates than making their debuts (although a good number entered in the last four years) and a hemicycle, in general, balanced in terms of ages. This is the portrait of the new Parliament, where the deputies of the new legislature take office this Tuesday.
Taking into account the parliamentarians elected by emigration circles — there are four of them and all men — there are now 76 women in Parliament, which compares to 154 men. The new Assembly of the Republic will thus have 33.04% of women, a number that is below the minimum representation stipulated by law of 33.3% and the values of the last two legislatures. It is necessary to go back to 2015 to find the same level of parity.
The group in which women have the most weight is that of BE: with three deputies out of five elected, women represent 60% of the parliamentary group. Next comes the PS, a party in which the 30 women elected represent 38.5% of the bench. Behind is IL, which elected three women out of eight deputies, that is, 37.5%.
In the PSD, there are 24 women out of 78 deputies (30.8%) and in Chega there are 13 out of 50 (26%). Both the PCP and Livre elected one woman out of four deputies, which represents 25%. In the CDS bench, which has two deputies, there is not a single woman, unlike the PAN, which has only one female deputy.
Between the renewal that some parties carried out in their lists, such as the PSD, and the growth of some political forces, such as Chega and Livre, Parliament will receive 95 new deputies. But there are more parliamentarians who will return than those who will make their debut, even though the majority of repeaters (85) have been part of the Assembly of the Republic for just one or two legislatures. That is, two to four years, given that the two past legislatures, 2019 and 2022, were interrupted halfway through.
There are also 42 deputies who have held parliamentary seats for three or five legislatures and eight who have served six or more terms in Parliament. Of the latter, the majority are part of the PS: Ana Catarina Mendes, Edite Estrela, Sérgio Sousa Pinto, Jamila Madeira and Paulo Pisco. Added to the list are José Cesário, from the PSD (with 12 legislatures), José Soeiro, from BE and António Filipe, from the PCP (with 11 mandates).
Only nine deputies are under 30 years old, a number that is behind the deputies over 65 years old, which are ten. Among young people, the majority are on the right: Eva Brás Pinho, Martim Syder and Ana Cabilhas, from the PSD; Rita Matias, Madalena Cordeiro (the youngest deputy, aged 20) and Daniel Teixeira, from Chega; and Bernardo Blanco and Patrícia Gilvaz, from IL. On the left, there is only one under-30 deputy, Miguel Costa Matos.
The oldest deputies are distributed throughout the hemicycle, but the majority sit on the Chega bench, which has the oldest deputies: Diogo Pacheco Amorim and Manuel Magno Alves, both 75 years old. The list also includes Luísa Macedo, Armando Grave and Jorge Galveias Rodrigues from the same party; José Pedro Aguiar Branco, Eduardo Oliveira e Sousa and Margarida Saavedra, from the PSD; and Edite Estrela and Rosário Gamboa, from PS.
The vast majority (114 deputies) are between 30 and 49 years old. This is followed by deputies between the ages of 50 and 65, of which there are 97 in this legislature. In total, there are more deputies between the ages of 20 and 49 (123) than there are deputies between the ages of 50 and 75 (107).
The oldest bench is that of the CDS, with an average age of 57 years. The PCP follows with 53.3; the PSD with 49.8; the PS with 49.4; o Arrives with 49; the Free with 40.5; and IL with 39.4. The youngest parliamentary group is BE, which has an average age of 39.2 years.
