Prime Minister and ministers of the XXIV Constitutional Government take office today

This will be the third executive that the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, will take office – but the first led by the PSD, the party he has already presided over – and neither of the previous two fulfilled their mandate to the end.

In the Ambassadors’ Room, the head of state will inaugurate the prime minister and then the 17 ministers, who will be called one by one, in hierarchical order, to take the oath and sign the instrument of inauguration.

The Secretaries of State of the XXIV Constitutional Government, who are not yet known, will only take office on Friday.

The inauguration ceremony is followed by interventions from the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro. Both have maintained almost total public silence in recent days.

The XXIV Constitutional Government will have two ministers of State – that of Foreign Affairs, Paulo Rangel, who will be the Government’s “number two”, and that of Finance, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento — and Montenegro will also have a Deputy Minister, Manuel Castro Almeida, with the Territorial Cohesion portfolio and the management of community funds.

More than 60% of the ministerial list belongs to the PSD Permanent Commission — the hard core of the leadership — and there are four names presented as independent, all ministers.

In total, the XXIV Government will have seven ministers, two less than the last PS executive led by António Costa.

In addition to Luís Montenegro, who never held executive functions, among the 17 ministers there is only one repeater – Maria da Graça Carvalho was Minister of Science and Higher Education in the PSD/CDS-PP Governments of Durão Barroso and Santana Lopes – and six others have already held secretaries of State in the past (Paulo Rangel, António Leitão Amaro, Manuel Castro Almeida, Pedro Duarte, Fernando Alexandre and Miguel Pinto Luz).

The first executive that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa swore in, on October 26, 2019, was the second Government led by António Costa, a minority PS executive who, unlike the first (still sworn in by Cavaco Silva), had no support of written agreements with parties to the left of the socialists — a condition that the head of state himself considered unnecessary and that the PCP rejected.

Following the “failure” of the State Budget for 2022, the head of state dissolved parliament and called early elections for January 30, resulting in an absolute majority for the PS.

On March 30, 2022, the inauguration of the XXIII Constitutional Government — Costa’s third — was marked by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s warning to the Prime Minister that it would be difficult to replace him in the middle of the legislature, arguing that the Portuguese “they gave an absolute majority to a party, but also to a man”.

However, despite having started his duties with a horizon of four and a half years – until September/October 2026 -, António Costa resigned as Prime Minister on November 7 last year, after it was made public that he was a target. of a judicial inquiry initiated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Supreme Court of Justice as a result of Operation Influencer.

The President of the Republic immediately accepted the Prime Minister’s resignation and decided to dissolve parliament, scheduling early legislative elections for March 10th.

These legislative elections resulted in the victory of the AD (pre-electoral coalition formed by PSD, CDS-PP and PPM) by around 54 thousand votes and 0.85% more than the PS, the shortest margin in the history of democracy.

The two coalitions led by the PSD — AD, on the Mainland and Azores, and Madeira Primeiro (PSD/CDS) — obtained 28.83% of the votes and 80 deputies (78 from the PSD and two from the CDS-PP), according to the results officers.

The PS was the second most voted party with 27.98% and 78 deputies.

SMA (IEL/NS) // JPS