Politics 2 August 2026

Portugal backs the EU's emergency Ceuta meeting, and it lands on Tuesday

Luís Montenegro said Portugal supports the extraordinary meeting of EU interior ministers on the Ceuta migration crisis, scheduled for Tuesday.

Portugal is not sitting this one out. The prime minister made clear the government supports holding an emergency meeting of EU interior ministers on Ceuta, set for Tuesday 4 August, and wants the issue handled at the level of all twenty-seven rather than country by country.

The position matters mostly for what it implies. An extraordinary interior ministers’ council is not standard August business; you call one when a member state decides it cannot cope alone. Spain reached that point after the mass arrival from Morocco pushed the enclave to the edge of administrative collapse in a matter of hours, and the call for the meeting came in a letter signed by 22 European leaders.

What will interior ministers actually discuss on Tuesday?

The core question is Europe’s answer to sudden, concentrated pressure on an external border — who pays, who takes people in, and what resources go into control. Spain wants operational and financial backing; other member states want assurances that the pressure is not simply redistributed across the map. Ceuta is EU territory, which makes its frontier with Morocco a fully-fledged European external border, with every obligation that carries.

From the Portuguese side the interest is concrete rather than theoretical: this same episode is why the Maritime Police and the Navy started daily patrols along the Algarve coast over the weekend.

Will Portugal have to take people in?

Nothing of the sort has been decided, and it is worth not running ahead of what actually exists. What is on Tuesday’s table is coordination and resources, not an announced share-out of people. Any mandatory solidarity mechanism comes with its own rules, its own deadlines and, historically, arguments that last a great deal longer than one afternoon in Brussels.

Portugal’s positions at European meetings are published as they go on the government’s official portal.

So Tuesday is the day. And if the last decade of emergency migration councils taught anything, it is that the final statement usually runs shorter than the meeting.

By Tomás Vasconcelos

Image: European Union / Wikimedia Commons (Attribution)

Politics 2 August 2026

Hamas has agreed to hand over its weapons, and now comes the hard part

Trump announced a Board of Peace deal to disarm Hamas and pass Gaza to a Palestinian technocratic government. The roadmap is due within 14 days.

Donald Trump stepped out on Thursday to announce what he called a historic agreement: Hamas and the other armed groups in Gaza will disarm and hand civilian and security control of the territory to a new Palestinian technocratic government. The announcement came from the Board of Peace, the body set up under the US-brokered ceasefire, and lands months after that ceasefire was signed. According to the American administration, the understanding came out of…

Politics 2 August 2026

The Luís Neves case has reached Belém, and the President wants it wrapped up fast

President António José Seguro called for rapid conclusions in the Luís Neves case and urged that the dignity of Portugal's institutions be preserved, the same weekend party leaders refused to hear the Interior Minister in the Standing Committee.

Portugal's President entered the affair around his Interior Minister in the most predictable and still most consequential way available to him: he asked for conclusions to come quickly, and urged that the dignity of the institutions be preserved. António José Seguro was speaking in Marvão, in his first public reaction to the controversies surrounding Luís Neves — who ran the Judicial Police until February, when he moved into government. The word choice…

Politics 1 August 2026

Ceuta just saw the biggest border crossing in its history, and Spain has already sent almost everyone back

Tens of thousands of people crossed into Ceuta this week, dozens died at sea, and Spain says most have already been returned to Morocco. A Supreme Court ruling sits at the centre of it.

It happened a few hundred kilometres from here and it caught everyone off guard. Over this week, tens of thousands of people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the North African coast, in the largest single influx that border has ever recorded. Many swam, going around the fence through the water. Dozens never reached the other side. The Spanish government counts close to 60,000 entries over several days, a figure that dwarfs…

The glazed facade of the Berlaymont building, headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels

Politics 1 August 2026

Portugal has 96 recovery-plan milestones left and until 31 August to close them

Some 283 of the 379 RRP milestones and targets agreed with the European Commission are complete. Ninety-six remain, and the deadline to close them and spend the grants is 31 August.

There is a concrete tally on the table now. Of the 379 milestones and targets Portugal agreed with the European Commission under its Recovery and Resilience Plan, 283 are complete. Ninety-six are outstanding, and the clock stops on 31 August. Ninety-six milestones, on the count given by Economy and Territorial Cohesion Minister Castro Almeida. That looks like a lot with a month to go, but much of it covers works and reforms already under way that only get…

Politics 31 July 2026

Portugal's social security report has landed on the government's desk, and nobody gets to read it yet

The expert group has delivered its study on the sustainability of Portugal's social security system and pensions. Publication, the government says, comes in the next few weeks.

The document that will shape half a generation's pensions is now sitting with the government. The expert group's final report on the sustainability of Portugal's social security system has been handed to the labour minister, and the official answer on when the rest of us get to read it was a politely vague one: in the coming weeks. The group, led by economist Jorge Bravo, was asked to look at the system's most sensitive parts and say what should be done…

The facade of Escola Secundaria Francisco Franco in Funchal, with cars parked out front

Politics 31 July 2026

Portugal's teacher recruitment gets a second contest — and this one never closes

The government approved a new model for hiring and placing teachers built on two centralised national contests, one annual and one continuous, starting in the 2027/2028 school year.

Anyone who has watched a class sit teacherless through November knows the flaw: the hiring round is settled in July and the school breaks in January. On Thursday the Council of Ministers gave first-stage approval to a new model for recruiting and placing teachers that goes straight at that mismatch. There will be two centralised national contests instead of one. The annual round keeps doing what it does, filling schools' permanent vacancies on the…

Politics 31 July 2026

Claiming compensation from the Portuguese State won't mean going to court

The Council of Ministers approved an administrative route for State liability claims plus a fast-track regime for administrative cases worth up to €15,000, targeting 18 months.

A pothole that wrecks a wheel. A permit that sat in a drawer for months. A mistake by a public service that cost somebody real money. Until now, anyone wanting to be paid back for that had essentially one route: hire a lawyer and file a case in an administrative court. The Government wants to open a far cheaper door. Straight from the body that caused the damage. The bill approved in the Council of Ministers creates an administrative procedure for…

Politics 30 July 2026

Phones are being banned in Portuguese schools up to year 9, and schools get a term to adjust

Portugal is extending its school phone ban to every pupil up to year 9, in force from 1 January 2027. Who it covers, what the exceptions are and what head teachers are reporting.

The rule already existed for the youngest pupils. Now it moves up the school. The government has decided to extend the classroom phone ban to every pupil up to year 9, through a change to the pupil statute, and it has deliberately avoided dropping the whole thing on schools overnight. On 1 January 2027. The first term of the coming school year works as a run-up, giving schools time to sort out the practicalities, from lockers to pocket rules, before the…

Politics 30 July 2026

Guterres leaves the UN at the end of the year, and seven people already want his chair

António Guterres's term as UN Secretary-General ends on 31 December 2026. Who the candidates are, how the choice is made, and when the name becomes public.

On 31 December, António Guterres's decade at the head of the United Nations comes to an end, and his successor starts work on 1 January 2027. For Portugal it closes a rare chapter — a Portuguese national does not often hold the most visible job in world diplomacy — and for the UN it is the biggest decision of a year in which the organisation was already taking hits from every direction. The field has grown through the year and now stands at seven. In the…

Politics 29 July 2026

André Ventura's parliament office was found turned upside down, and the judicial police have been in

The Chega leader's office in Portugal's parliament was found ransacked on the morning of 28 July. The door was not forced, the PJ is investigating, and Ventura says documents on Luís Neves are missing.

The first person into the office on Tuesday morning was a cleaner. She found papers across the floor, drawers pulled open and the whole room turned over — and went straight to security. The office belongs to André Ventura, leader of Chega, inside the Palácio de São Bento, and from that moment the morning in parliament stopped being an ordinary one. Parliamentary security sealed the room immediately and handed the case to the Polícia Judiciária, which sent…

Politics 28 July 2026

Trump is hosting Zelenskyy and Netanyahu on the same day, so both wars land at the White House at once

Donald Trump holds separate meetings on Tuesday with Ukraine's president and Israel's prime minister. Ukraine's peace process and the war with Iran are both at decisive stages.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the morning, Benjamin Netanyahu straight after. Donald Trump put both meetings on the same Tuesday and, deliberately or not, turned the day into a stocktake of the two wars driving American foreign policy. The Russia-Ukraine peace process. A White House official summed up the American position in one short line — now is the time to end the war — and the tone of the relationship has shifted a long way from last year's tense…

Politics 28 July 2026

The ICC has removed Karim Khan as chief prosecutor, something it had never done before

ICC member states voted to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan after findings of serious misconduct, which he denies. It is the first time the court has ousted the person leading its prosecutions.

The International Criminal Court has spent 24 years judging heads of state and had never had to settle a problem this big inside its own walls. It settled this one with a vote: Karim Khan is no longer chief prosecutor. The Assembly of States Parties, where the court's 125 member states sit, concluded that he had committed serious misconduct and a serious breach of duty, following harassment allegations brought by a female member of staff who worked with…

Politics 28 July 2026

Portugal's single social benefit gets its rulebook within days, and it costs 30 million euros more a year

The government is about to approve the decree that sets amounts and eligibility for the Prestacao Social Unica, the benefit folding 13 separate supports into one.

We are days away from knowing who gets paid and how much. The government is preparing to approve the decree that sets the amounts and eligibility conditions for the Prestacao Social Unica, and the labour ministry has already put a figure on it: an extra 30 million euros a year in social protection. It is an attempt to tidy the house. Instead of thirteen separate benefits inside Social Security's solidarity subsystem, including the minimum income support…

The headquarters of Portugal's Judicial Police in Lisbon, the force Luis Neves led before becoming a minister

Politics 26 July 2026

Luis Neves is getting a parliamentary inquiry into his years running the PJ, and he says bring it on

Chega is forcing a parliamentary inquiry into Luis Neves' terms as national director of Portugal's Judicial Police, set for September. Iniciativa Liberal wants the interior minister questioned sooner.

The story about the interior minister's home renovations just changed size. This is no longer a row about invoices and a trailer: Chega leader André Ventura announced on Friday that his party is going ahead with a parliamentary inquiry into Luis Neves' time as national director of the Judicial Police. The minister, who has spent weeks insisting he is perfectly calm, answered with two words: good, finally. It is the heaviest instrument parliament has for…