European Council President António Costa intends to summon EU leaders to an informal retreat in rural Belgium next February to discuss Europe’s competitiveness. The meeting of the bloc’s heads of state and government will take place on Feb. 12 at Alden Biesen Castle, a XVI century moated complex in the eastern Belgian region of Limburg, Costa said in an interview with Portuguese daily Expresso. The informal summit on competitiveness will take place just a few months after the leaders debated the European Commission’s proposal to foster a pan-European industrial revival by merging cash for research, defense and innovation in the EU’s 2028-2035 budget. Shortly before taking office a year ago, the Council president said he wanted to organize periodic, informal meetings of EU leaders where they could discuss broad, strategic topics without the need to reach definitive conclusions. The objective was to create space for the kinds of debates that regularly derailed official summits chaired by Costa’s predecessor, Charles Michel. Although Costa wanted to hold the retreats outside the Belgian capital, security concerns obliged him to hold the first of these events in Brussels’ central Egmont Palace last February. During that session, EU leaders discussed issues related to the wider topic of European defense. Last week the bloc’s leaders attended an informal meeting in Luanda, Angola, where talks focused on the ongoing efforts to secure a lasting peace in Ukraine. During the wide-ranging interview with Expresso, which marked his first year in the Council presidency, Costa said the greatest challenge he has faced was that of stabilizing relations between the EU and U.S. President Donald Trump. That goal, he said, had been achieved, but he acknowledged that the dynamics between Brussels and Washington are “different” than they once were. Costa said it was essential for the EU to “remain calm, serene, and continue to strive to be constructive” when dealing with Trump, and noted that the relationship between Brussels and Washington is not “between equals.” The EU, he noted, is made up of 27 member countries “each with its own policies and interests,” while the U.S. operates as a single, federal entity.

In a bid to force Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas to step down after last week’s deadly funicular disaster, Portuguese lawmakers are using the politician’s own words against him. Sixteen people died when the iconic Glória Funicular’s suspension cable snapped last Wednesday, causing one of its tram cars to plummet down a steep slope and smash into a building. Following the catastrophe, leading politicians are claiming the city failed to adequately maintain its 140-year old railway system, and are evoking Moedas’ past statements in an attempt to push for his resignation. In 2021, Moedas’ predecessor Fernando Medina came under fire when his administration admitted to giving Russian authorities the personal information of at least three Lisbon-based Russian dissidents. Moedas — at the time a former European commissioner running as the center-right candidate in the local elections — had slammed the incumbent mayor, saying he had to take responsibility for the scandal. “City hall put these people in mortal danger,” he told POLITICO. “There have to be political consequences: Medina has to resign.” Now, with less than a month before Lisbon’s local elections, Moedas’ political opponents are citing his words from four years ago and demanding he take responsibility for the funicular disaster. “What would the Moedas of 2021 say to the Moedas of 2025?” asked André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party. “Serious politicians do not hide in times of crisis and do not shirk their responsibility: They assume it.” On the opposite side of the political spectrum, Secretary-General of the Portuguese Communist Party Paulo Raimundo also said Moedas’ own standards mean he’s no longer qualified to lead the city. The Socialist Party’s parliamentary leader Eurico Brilhante Dias similarly called for the mayor to be “coherent.” In an interview with POLITICO, Moedas insisted the funicular disaster couldn’t be compared to the scandal that embroiled his predecessor. While Medina had “direct responsibility” over the municipal employees who shared dissidents’ personal information, he argued last week’s accident wasn’t “attributable to a decision made by the mayor.” ASSIGNING BLAME A preliminary report released by Portugal’s transit safety authority this weekend attributes the crash to mechanical failure and rejects the possibility that human error played a role in the tragedy. Moedas’ critics say the findings raise serious questions about the historic funicular’s upkeep. In the aftermath of the disaster, employees of Lisbon’s Carris public transit authority said they spent years raising concerns about the funicular’s maintenance, which is subcontracted to private companies. They argued experienced in-house municipal engineers are better equipped to deal with the city’s aged infrastructure. Moedas told POLITICO the companies overseeing the maintenance have to “meet very strict specifications” and are monitored by Carris technicians who “reviewed and adapted all maintenance plans in accordance with necessary developments and changing realities.” He also declined to take responsibility for the outsourcing, which was decided in 2006, and insisted his administration hadn’t cut Carris’ operating budget. Moedas’ assertions don’t appear to have swayed Chega’s mayoral candidate Bruno Mascarenhas though, who is set to present a censure motion against the mayor on Tuesday. “The maximum representative of Carris, [the mayor] has to take responsibility,” Mascarenhas declared. Carlos Moedas insisted the funicular disaster couldn’t be compared to the scandal that embroiled his predecessor. | Horacio Villabos/Getty Images The mayor dismissed the censure motion as grandstanding ahead of the local elections. “This case has brought out the worst in politics and political exploitation,” he said, noting that the proposed motion would be nonbinding. Wary of being seen as playing politics with the tragedy, Socialist candidate Alexandra Leitão — who is polling neck and neck with Moedas — has yet to call for her rival’s resignation, insisting that it’s “premature” to make a political assessment. But on Monday, she urged Moedas to be more transparent about what went wrong. “The preliminary report shows that the safety system was insufficient, and that the technical inspections failed to detect the problems that eventually occurred,” she told supporters. “Something needs to change.”

Portugal’s far-right Chega group secured its place as the country’s leading opposition party on Wednesday night, when the final results of this month’s legislative election were confirmed. After tallying the ballots from abroad, Portugal’s electoral authority awarded two additional seats in the country’s parliament to Chega, and two to Prime Minister Luís Montenegro’s Democratic Alliance coalition, which scored the most votes in the May 18 election. The center-right therefore remains the largest force in the parliament, controlling 91 of its 230 seats, followed by André Ventura’s ultranationalist group, which will have 60 lawmakers in the hemicycle. Chega’s new role as the country’s main opposition party confirms the far right’s remarkable growth in Portugal. In six years, the ultranationalist party has gone from having just one lawmaker in parliament to now controlling more than a quarter of the seats in the country’s legislative body. Portuguese voters responded enthusiastically to a far-right campaign that depicted mainstream parties as being corrupt and incapable of addressing challenges that include chronically low wages, the housing crisis and increased immigration. Expat communities in France, Luxembourg, the U.K. and Brazil overwhelmingly backed Chega, swayed by its pledge to create economic conditions that will allow emigrés to come home. Chega leader Ventura promised to lead a “smooth and healthy regime change” while addressing supporters on Wednesday, adding that the only people who had any reason to fear him were “those who have spent the past 50 years robbing Portugal.” The far-right party’s advances in the latest snap elections — the third to be held in three years — came at the expense of the Socialist Party, which lost out to Chega across the southern half of Portugal, including in some districts it had controlled since the 1974 Carnation Revolution. The socialists held an absolute majority under Prime Minister António Costa as recently as March of last year, but have struggled to find their footing since his resignation in the midst of an influence-peddling scandal and subsequent selection to be president of the European Council. This Saturday, the party is expected to elect former Interior Minister José Luís Carneiro to succeed Pedro Nuno Santos, who stepped down on election night, as their next leader. Carneiro, one of the few prominent Costa ministers never to have been tainted by scandal, is promising to toe a moderate line. He is key to collaboration with Montenegro and to ensuring Chega is kept at bay at the national level. To that end, he has already signalled that he will support the incumbent prime minister’s bid to form a new minority government as soon as possible. Portuguese voters head back to the polls this fall for nationwide local elections in which Chega is expected to grow even further. The far-right party could conquer up to 21 city halls, among them Sintra — the country’s second-most populous municipality — and Montijo, Vila Franca de Xira and Alenquer, all of which have been governed by the left since the fall of the Estado Novo dictatorship.

The southeastern part of France, including the city of Cannes, suffered a power outage on Saturday, temporarily disrupting the international film festival. About 160,000 households lost power on Saturday morning around 10 a.m. following a fire at a high-voltage transformer and damage to power lines, France’s electricity operator RTE said, adding it is working to restore the system. Both the fire and the damage to the power lines appeared to be of criminal origin, according to the local police which opened an investigation. The power cut also disrupted internet connections, the phone network, as well as traffic in the city and the train system. The organizers of the Cannes film festival, which closes on Saturday night with the award of the prestigious Palme d’Or, said the blackout led to few disruptions. Some film screenings were interrupted, but the closing ceremony will take place as planned on Saturday night and “in normal conditions” as the venue runs on independent power generators, the organizers said.

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. What an exciting weekend it’s been for Europe. Not only did the continent barely survive yet another glittery diplomatic summit complete with questionable voting patterns and Israel-related drama — aka the Eurovision song contest – but it also hosted another major event: Its very own political triathlon, with elections taking place in Romania, Poland and Portugal. Because if there’s one thing that unites all Europeans, it’s making not-so-subtle political statements with fog machines and off-key falsettos, and then voting on the potential downfall of democratic values in three of the 27 EU member states. That, and serving kant, of course. So, how did it go? Is humanity over yet? Are we in the good place or the bad place? (Definitely the bad place.) Maybe that’s too dramatic. After all, no good doomsday story ever started with a mathematician as the bad guy. He doesn’t sound like the ideal lead character who will save humanity, to be honest, but beggars can’t be choosers. In Romania, the centrist Mayor of Bucharest Nicușor Dan won a stunning victory over the hard-right candidate and Trumpian darling, George Simion. Dan is known for fighting corruption and being the type of person who thinks before he speaks, which feels slightly out of character for a politician. He’s a mathematician by training, making him the first nerd to ever win a popularity contest. His victory also made one of the Tate brothers sad, according to social media. Who knew that the manosphere alpha male influencer had such emotional depth? Unfortunately, things are not as clear-cut for the rest of the three-headed electoral hydra: Poland and Portugal seem to be left in voting limbo. The Poles will need to hit the polls again (eds: Is this a pun? Yes, we wrote it in even if it’s ap-pole-ingly unfunny) to choose between another centrist mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, and populist right-wing historian-turned-politician, Karol Nawrocki. Nerds are not only popular among moderates, it seems. Portugal, in true southern European style, elected a fractured parliament with no clear majority to run the country. Maybe time for a fourth vote in four years? Whether we will get more votes — or more glitter — remains to be seen. But one thing we know for sure: The winner always takes it all. CAPTION COMPETITION “I promise you, Your Holiness, I won’t do to you what I did to your predecessor.” Can you do better? Email us at gpoloni@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last week, we gave you this photo: Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our mailbag — there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze. “Do you think VdL’s WhatsApp messages to God are subject to transparency measures too?” by Andrew Ephraim Hillman

Portugal will demand that the European Commission push France for better electricity links to the Iberian Peninsula following last month’s crippling power outage, Portuguese Energy Minister Maria da Graça Carvalho said. The low number of cross-border cables means there is less network capacity to balance out blackouts like the massive one that paralyzed Spain and Portugal in late April. Carvalho said she sees this a European Single Market issue. “We will involve the president of the European Commission on this to make sure that we are all integrated and … we help each other to solve the problems,” Carvalho said in an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday. “This is a European question; it’s not a question between the three countries.” Portugal’s grid is highly integrated with its Spanish neighbor, which is how the power outage spread easily westward. Spain, in turn, is connected by just a few lines to France. Nuclear-friendly France is, according to Spain and Portugal at least, is delaying new links to prevent cheap solar and wind energy from flooding the French market. French grid operator RTE denies this. Both a cable via the Bay of Biscay and an overland powerline should address the shortage. “France has no interest in accelerating our interconnections for its nuclear energy,” Carvalho told El País last week in an interview where she also called for pressure from Brussels. “Having an interconnected system is good for everyone,” a senior EU official explained last month, adding that connections make it easier to manage dramatic power-supply changes. The European Parliament last week voted in favor of a resolution calling for a major expansion of power connections across the bloc. “The Iberian blackout shows painfully how vulnerable our grids still are,” Anna Stürgkh, the lead MEP on the file, told POLITICO. The Austrian liberal called on the Commission in Brussels to “act decisively to prioritize planning and coordination on grids and storage.” Otherwise, “we’ll keep lurching from one crisis to the next,” she said. Gabriel Gavin contributed to this report.

LISBON — Barely a year after Portugal held its last national election, voters are headed back to the polls this Sunday to decide who should run the country. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro’s integrity was called into question after the Portuguese press began reporting on Spinumviva — a data protection consultancy controlled by Montenegro’s family, with clients including several companies that hold government contracts. Although the center-right politician denied any conflict of interest and survived several censure motions filed against his minority government, he eventually stepped down after losing a confidence vote in parliament in March. So little time has elapsed since the last election, that Sunday’s vote seems almost identical to last year’s: The same candidates are facing off against each other and a hung parliament seems inevitable. The major difference is that tensions between the country’s political factions have intensified over the past 14 months, and will potentially make it even more difficult to form a government. UNINSPIRING CHOICES As was the case last year, the latest polls have Montenegro’s Democratic Alliance projected to win the most votes, but falling short of securing the 116 seats needed for majority rule. Pedro Nuno Santos’ Socialist Party is again expected to come in second, and the far-right Chega party will remain the third-largest group in parliament. Whereas Montenegro and Santos were first-time candidates in the last race, voters have now gotten to know them, and polls suggest the public is unimpressed with both. Barely half the population approves of the incumbent prime minister, less than a third likes his center-left rival, and nearly half of respondents to one survey said they’d decline to take a round-the-world trip with either. Polls also indicate many voters blame the Socialist Party for the political crisis that triggered this election — a factor that may give Montenegro an advantage on Sunday. In 2022, then-Prime Minister António Costa scored a landslide victory thanks to the support of electors who blamed his former far-left partners for scuppering his budget proposal and forcing his government’s fall. JINXED CAMPAIGN The campaign period itself has been marred by issues beyond Portugal’s borders. The key debate between Montenegro and Santos had to be postponed after a freak blackout left the entire Iberian Peninsula in the dark for the better part of a day. And the first half of the official two-week campaign was overshadowed by the papal conclave, with little public or national media attention paid to electoral events at home Paradoxically, the issues dominating the campaign were solidly domestic, with limited discussion of the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs or even Portugal’s role in European defense. Instead, candidates half-heartedly sparred over how immigration policies should be tightened, and over the Spinumviva “scandal.” Surprisingly, one issue that didn’t come up was whether Montenegro would partner with the far right if he won the election but failed to secure a governing majority. Those fears abounded last year, but voters now appear satisfied the center-right politician can be trusted to keep the ultranationalists out of his executive. UNCLEAR OUTLOOK If Montenegro can secure the largest share of the votes on Sunday, he’ll be called on to form a government. But if a majority of the fractured parliament’s lawmakers band together to reject his governing program, he can be stopped from assuming office. Last year, Santos opted for constructive collaboration and ordered his Socialist Party to abstain in critical votes, which enabled Montenegro to both form a minority government and, later, pass a crucial budget bill. But relations between the two main parties have soured in the wake of the failed confidence vote, and it’s unclear if the center left will come to the center right’s rescue once more. If Luís Montenegro can secure the largest share of the votes on Sunday, he’ll be called on to form a government. | Miguel A. Lopes/EFE via EPA If Montenegro’s government does get shot down by the parliament, Santos will be called on to try his luck — but he’d be similarly rejected by center-right lawmakers, leaving the country in limbo. Portugal’s constitution doesn’t set a deadline for the formation of a new government, nor does it include any clause that would force the dissolution of parliament if lawmakers fail to confirm a new prime minister. The constitution does, however, prohibit snap elections within six months of the vote and during the final six months of a presidential term. Given that President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s term concludes in March 2026, the earliest a fresh national election could be held is late spring of next year. NEVER STOP VOTING If Portugal’s politicians are unable to reach a compromise, they could leave the country with Montenegro leading a caretaker government for the foreseeable future. But political stagnation won’t relieve citizens of their electoral duties anytime soon. This fall, Portuguese voters will be summoned back to the polls to take part in nationwide local elections. In January, they’ll be called upon to choose de Sousa’s successor. And if consensus proves impossible on Sunday, they may well be obliged to vote in a national election for the fourth time in four years, right around this time in 2026. Mark your calendars …

Portugal’s prime minister and opposition leader canceled a televised election debate scheduled for Monday due to a massive electricity blackout across the country, local media reported. Prime Minister Luís Montenegro of the center-right Social Democratic Party and Pedro Nuno Santos of the main opposition, center-left Socialist Party were supposed to face off Monday night. But with most of the country without power, both leaders agreed to postpone their debate to a later date, Portuguese news agency Lusa reported. Monday’s monster outage saw the entire Iberian Peninsula lose power. In Lisbon, the metro was shut down, ATMs and traffic lights stopped working, and phone and internet traffic was disrupted. The cause of the blackout was a “very strong oscillation in the electrical network,” Spain’s transmission system operator Red Eléctrica said Monday afternoon, and would take several hours to rectify. Portugal’s next election will take place on May 18. The snap vote was called after the center-right minority government, led by Montenegro, lost a vote of confidence last month. Meanwhile, the European Union’s Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath said on social media on Monday he would cancel an upcoming trip to Madrid due to the outage. This article has been updated.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced on Thursday he would dissolve the country’s parliament on March 19 and called for snap national elections to be held May 18. The dissolution follows Tuesday’s no-confidence vote against center-right Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, whom opposition parties accuse of falling foul of conflict of interest rules due to his connections with Spinumviva, a data protection firm owned by his family.  The snap legislative elections are the third to be held in Portugal since 2023 and come just 14 months after the previous vote. With so little time having elapsed between the ballots, Portugal’s political landscape remains virtually unchanged. Montenegro will once again stand as the candidate of the center-right Democratic Alliance and will face off against Socialist Party leader Pedro Nuno Santos. According to the latest surveys, the center right is once again projected to win the most votes, narrowly ahead of the Socialist Party. Although support for the far-right Chega party has fallen slightly, it is still likely to remain the third-largest group in the parliament and will therefore be positioned to act as kingmaker during the next term. With the country’s two largest parties neck-and-neck in the polls, participation is expected to be a decisive factor in the results, but it is feared that fatigue will keep electors from voting. The snap elections are being wedged into the middle of a year that was already set to be a marathon for voters. Regional elections will be held on the autonomous region of Madeira later this month, while nationwide local elections are scheduled for the fall. Voters are set to head back to the polls for a final time in January, when they will be asked to choose Rebelo de Sousa’s successor as president.

Portuguese politician Miguel Arruda is out of the far-right Chega party after being accused of stealing suitcases from airport luggage carousels in a bizarre case that includes widely aired video footage and charges of AI manipulation. Arruda said he decided to stay in the parliament as an independent MP, leaving Chega, a populist, far-right party that has grown to become Portugal’s third-largest political force.  Police on Tuesday charged Arruda with luggage theft after missing suitcases were allegedly found at his home, several Portuguese news outlets reported. One outlet, Expresso, said police found 17 suitcases in his home. Arruda has denied any wrongdoing, claiming that video surveillance footage allegedly showing him taking someone else’s suitcase could have been generated by artificial intelligence, according to local media. “I am being crucified on the public square … but until proven otherwise, I am innocent,” he told broadcaster Portuguese TVI. The MP has announced that he intends to take medical leave, in statements to Portuguese news channel SIC Notícias. His lawyer told the news outlet Observador that Arruda will file a criminal complaint for “breach of judicial secrecy” in the case.