PS leader José Luís Carneiro left Thursday's meeting accusing Luís Montenegro of intransigence: the government refused to rewrite the rental law from scratch or scrap the €2,300 'moderate rent' tax break. It did signal openness on a capital-gains exemption for home sellers and higher purchase tax for non-resident buyers. Smaller parties go in on Friday.

By Tomás Vasconcelos

Image: PES Group Committee of the Regions / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Defence ministers Nuno Melo and Boris Pistorius signed a declaration of intent in Berlin on 4 November covering the Boxer purchase for the Portuguese Army, talks on training F-35 pilots in Portugal, drones and a satellite-launch site on Santa Maria in the Azores.

The Portuguese Army is getting 72 Boxer armoured vehicles in a deal worth more than a billion euros, and the plan is for them to be built and maintained in Portugal. The purchase was the most concrete item in the declaration of intent Nuno Melo signed in Berlin with his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius on Wednesday, as reported by Lusa and carried by ECO.

Óscar Puente announced his resignation in Congress on Tuesday and also gave up his place on the Socialist list for 29 November. Pedro Sánchez handed the ministry to first deputy prime minister Carlos Cuerpo, who keeps the economy brief until the vote.

Spain's transport minister, Óscar Puente, has resigned. He told Congress's standing committee on Tuesday, after roughly four hours of questions from the other parliamentary groups. He is not only leaving government either: he has also given up his place on the Socialist (PSOE) list for the snap general election on 29 November. On Wednesday Pedro Sánchez said who takes over. The job goes to Carlos Cuerpo, according to La Moncloa's note on Sánchez's…

In the 3 November midterms Democrats took Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Maine, South Carolina, North Carolina, Iowa and Ohio and won back the House. Susan Collins conceded in Maine. Trump says he will work with them, and reminds them he has the veto.

Democrats will run both chambers of Congress from January, PBS NewsHour reported. US networks projected the House for them at about 10.40pm on Tuesday in Washington (3.40am in Lisbon) and the Senate roughly an hour later, on a night when the president's party lost seats in states it had not lost in a generation. Going in, Democrats needed a net gain of four Senate seats. They gained seven.

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…

Lisbon's Administrative Court ruled on Sunday that the 12.30am cut-off for demonstrations is neither absolute nor automatic, and allowed protester Renata Cambra to stay overnight in Rossio with a tent until the day of the final 2027 budget vote. The ruling does not legalise the collective camp.

Lisbon's Administrative Court sided on Sunday with one member of the housing protest camp. Renata Cambra may spend the night in Rossio, in a tent, until 24 November, the date set for the final vote on Portugal's 2027 State Budget. The ruling landed a few hours after police cleared the Lisbon and Porto camps for the third time in the early hours of the same Sunday, detaining 13 people. Portugal's 1974 law on public assemblies sets 12.30am as the limit for…

Cabinet approved the new teacher recruitment regime on 30 July, a week before the final negotiation meeting set for 6 August. Fenprof says that broke public-sector bargaining law, and the President has since signed it. The ombudsman met the union on 29 October.

Fenprof, Portugal's largest teachers' union federation, has filed a complaint with the Provedora de Justiça, the national ombudsman, over how the Government negotiated the new system for recruiting and placing state-school teachers. Its statement of 31 October also takes aim at someone who was not part of the August row: the President, who has since signed the decree into law without answering the union's objections.

Americans vote on 3 November for all 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats and 36 governors. Republicans hold the Senate 53-47. In Lisbon, the first polls close at 11pm on Tuesday and the last, in Alaska, around 6am on Wednesday.

Americans go to the polls on Tuesday, 3 November, in the first nationwide election since Donald Trump returned to the White House. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up, along with 35 Senate seats (the 33 senators whose terms end in 2027 plus special elections in Ohio and Florida) and 36 governorships. The number to watch is four. The Senate splits 53 Republicans to 47 Democrats, so Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control.…

On Friday a judge elected by the current parliament ordered the Constitutional Tribunal's president and vice-president off the job for a month. They refuse to go. Donald Tusk calls it restoring the rule of law, the opposition calls it a coup, and President Nawrocki cut short a trip to Senegal.

Poland woke up on Saturday with two competing answers to a basic question: who runs its Constitutional Tribunal? At about 6pm Warsaw time on Friday, the court's website announced that its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and vice-president, Bartłomiej Sochański, had been suspended from their duties for up to a month. Within half an hour the tribunal's official X account said the opposite. The website, it said, had been unlawfully taken over, and both men…

Portugal's cabinet approved the decree-law cutting IRS rates in the first six brackets on 29 October, backdated to 1 January. November withholding on wages and pensions is halved, which for many people advances more money than the cut is worth. The difference is settled in the 2027 tax return.

This year's income tax cut in Portugal is now law in all but the signature. On Thursday 29 October the Council of Ministers approved the decree-law lowering IRS rates in the first six brackets, backdated to 1 January 2026. The government says almost three million households benefit and puts the cost at 400 million euros. When cabinet first signed off the idea in September, it still needed a vote in parliament. Parliament has since granted the…

The 2027 State Budget bill cleared its first reading on 28 October with PSD and CDS-PP in favour, PS, PAN and JPP abstaining, and Chega, IL, Livre, PCP and BE against. Committee stage runs 18 to 23 November and the final vote is on the 24th.

Portugal's 2027 State Budget has cleared its first parliamentary hurdle. On Wednesday afternoon, 28 October, bill 110/XVII/2 was approved in principle with votes in favour from the governing PSD and CDS-PP. The Socialists (PS), PAN and JPP abstained. Chega, the Liberal Initiative, Livre, the Communists and the Left Bloc all voted no. Nobody was holding their breath. Once the PS's 58 MPs stepped aside, the AD's 91 seats were enough on their own, as the…

With about 90% of votes counted, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud has 26 of the Knesset's 120 seats, ahead of 21 for Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar. Netanyahu's bloc has 53, Eisenkot's 48 and the Arab-led parties 19. Turnout reached 77.7%, and the double-envelope count runs into Thursday.

Israelis voted on Tuesday and woke up on Wednesday without a winner. Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud is once again the biggest party, but neither the prime minister's bloc nor the opposition reaches the 61 seats needed to control the 120-seat Knesset. The channel 11, 12 and 13 exit polls put Likud on 24 or 25 seats on election night. Overnight projections lifted it as high as 27 or 28. With about 90% of the vote counted on Wednesday afternoon, Likud stood at…

The movement born from the Novi Sad canopy protests took 52.7% in Sunday's snap election, per the electoral commission (RIK), for a projected 140 of 250 seats. Vučić's United Serbia list got 39.2%. Turnout was 68.8%.

Serbia's student movement has turned two years of street protest into a parliamentary majority. The Student List won Sunday's snap election outright, and Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat. The Republic Electoral Commission's results gave the Student List 52.71% in Monday night's count, with 8,187 of 8,392 polling stations in. United Serbia, the list led by Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party, was on 39.2%. Turnout reached 68.8%, the highest in more than…

US District Judge Jesse Furman in New York found that the July 2025 firing of federal prosecutor Maurene Comey broke the Civil Service Reform Act and the separation of powers. He ordered her reinstated retroactively with back pay. The Justice Department says it will appeal.

A federal judge in New York ruled on Monday that the US Justice Department unlawfully fired prosecutor Maurene Comey. Jesse Furman, of the Southern District of New York, ordered her reinstated retroactively and paid the salary she lost. The Justice Department has already responded. It disagrees with the decision and says it will appeal. In a 55-page decision, Furman concluded that the firing broke the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and the…

Brazil's electoral court gave Lula 51.79% against Flávio Bolsonaro's 48.21%. Among Brazilians voting in Portugal he took 59.42%, but lost the Faro consulate.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won a fourth term as Brazil's president. On Sunday night Brazil's electoral court announced his re-election with 64,256,232 votes, or 51.79% of valid votes, against 59,826,041 (48.21%) for Flávio Bolsonaro. That is a margin of about 4.4 million votes out of 128.2 million cast. More than 158 million Brazilians were eligible, and abstention fell to roughly 19.2% from 21.08% in the first round.