Two new members join Portugal's Council of State as it sits for five hours on social cohesion
President Seguro convened the Council of State at Belém on Monday 2 November. The meeting ran for more than five hours. The closing statement names inequality, regional cohesion and access to housing, education and health, but sets out no measures. The Constitutional Court president and the Ombudsman were sworn in first.
Portugal’s Council of State spent Monday afternoon and much of the evening behind closed doors at the Belém palace, on a single subject: social cohesion. It sat down at 3pm and broke up more than five hours later. What came out was a short statement, and no measures.
None were expected. The Council is the President’s advisory body. The Portuguese Constitution gives it a voice, not a vote, and its meetings are private. The public learns whatever Belém decides to write down.
What Belém wrote down
The Presidency’s statement on the meeting says António José Seguro asked councillors how social cohesion could be strengthened, framing it as a precondition for tackling the country’s structural problems. The discussion covered inequality, regional cohesion and access to essentials. Housing is listed first, ahead of education and health.
Seguro thanked the members for their input and came back to a line he has used for weeks now. Without social cohesion, he argues, people stop trusting democratic institutions.
One councillor told a Portuguese newspaper that each member got two twenty-minute turns, and that housing took up roughly a third of the time. There are no public minutes to check that against.
New faces, empty chairs
Before the meeting opened, two ex officio members were sworn in. João Carlos Loureiro, president of the Constitutional Court, and Luísa Neto, the Ombudsman. Four seats were empty: former president Ramalho Eanes, parliament speaker José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, Azores regional president José Manuel Bolieiro, and councillor Maria do Carmo Fonseca.
Why this, why now
The timing is not subtle. The week before, Seguro saw all ten parliamentary parties individually on the same theme. On the streets, police had just cleared the Lisbon and Porto housing protest camps for a third time. And parliament has two live fronts: the 2027 State Budget, with a final vote set for 24 November, and the government’s overhaul of residential tenancy law, approved in principle and now in committee.
That second front is where the parties part ways. The PSD says it is open to changing the rent bill. The PS wants it withdrawn and has floated an alternative built on a public guarantee for landlords. Chega will negotiate, but wants tax deductions for rent and mortgage payments settled in the Budget instead. Whether the bill makes evictions easier is still the question everyone is arguing about.
The Council of State settles none of that. What Monday’s meeting does show is where the President wants the conversation to go over the three weeks left before the Budget’s final vote.
Illustration: Tugadaily
