How Portugal’s surging far right is already flexing its muscles

Good morning. Today, our Iberian correspondent reports on the struggle to elect a speaker of Portugal’s parliament in a harbinger of the new far-right’s power to disrupt. And our Athens correspondent previews a move by Greece’s opposition to pin the blame for a tragic train crash on the government.

Europe Express will take a break for the Easter holiday, and return to your inboxes on Tuesday April 2. Have a good weekend.

Chega rises

Portugal’s new prime minister Luís Montenegro is off to the rockiest of starts, unable to get his chosen speaker of parliament elected for a full term in a harbinger of more trouble to come, writes Barney Jopson.

Context: Montenegro’s centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) won a legislative election earlier this month but fell far short of a majority. He refused to invite the surging far-right Chega party into a coalition, but that means he is leading a fragile minority government.

Montenegro, who has bolstered the EU’s ranks of conservative leaders, has had zero honeymoon period.

He went from being nominated as prime minister by Portugal’s president last Thursday into a crisis this week over the election of a speaker to parliament, which has one chamber and 230 seats.

The speakership normally goes to the largest party and at the start of the week AD (which has 80 seats) appeared to have a deal with Chega (which has 50) to install its candidate, even though Montenegro has repeatedly ruled out a more formal pact with Chega.

But things fell apart when some AD lawmakers denied there was any deal and Chega got upset. Its charismatic leader André Ventura, still smarting at being shut out of government, said his party was not receiving the respect it deserved.

Montenegro found a half-satisfactory solution on Wednesday by turning to his party’s age-old rivals, the Socialists, who had just got kicked out of government but have 78 seats.

Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos agreed to vote for the idea of a rotating speakership, which will give Montenegro’s candidate just two years in the job, followed by two years for a Socialist — if the government lasts that long.

The Socialists stressed that it was merely an “institutional solution” that did not alter their intention to oppose Montenegro’s legislative plans, including a pivotal 2025 budget.

Ventura, meanwhile, took the deal as proof that the two parties, whose duopoly he says has failed Portugal, were out to protect the status quo.

Montenegro’s party “has chosen its travelling companion for this legislature”, Ventura said. “It seems clear that there will only be one party that will lead the opposition and that will be Chega.”

Chart du jour: Green gap

The EU has the most advanced green legislation in the world. But the bloc is not on track to meet its climate goals, and emissions targets are drifting further out of reach, an FT investigation has found.

Tragedy returns

Greece’s ruling centre-right government must today negotiate its first big hurdle since its re-election in July 2023, with a no-confidence vote called by opposition parties, writes Eleni Varvitsioti.

Context: Greece’s deadliest train crash occurred in February last year, resulting in the deaths of 57 people and posing big questions over the management of the railway operator. 

Four opposition parties claim that the government tried to cover up its responsibility and manipulated information related to the tragedy. This followed a To Vima newspaper report suggesting that audio recordings of rail officials, leaked to the media soon after the accident, had been selectively chosen to pin the blame on human error. 

The government said the judges handling the investigation have the unedited conversations, and the inquiry has not been distorted.

Although the vote is highly likely to fail because Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ New Democracy party holds a comfortable majority of 158 seats out of 300, it indicates the importance that the crash still plays in public opinion.

A year on, the tragedy has received renewed public attention after the mother of a victim made public appearances asking for justice. This has contributed to a fall in Mitsotakis’ support in the latest polls.

The crash, when a passenger train and a freight train collided after being directed on to the same track, highlighted long-term problems with rail monitoring systems and exposed the failure of successive governments and international creditors to transform a railway operator struggling with €11bn in accumulated debt. 

What to watch today

1. Industry commissioner Thierry Breton speaks at the Tech For Future event.

2. Commission vice-president Věra Jourová meets US election officials in New York.

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