Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa knew: “The Prime Minister went to an international meeting and understood that he had to give Jose Mourinho a hug. He said to me “he is a Portuguese man involved, I will give him a hug, maybe luck” and almost gave”.
António Costa made a stopover in Budapest on May 31, on his way to Moldova for the European Political Community summit, without the event being scheduled. The prime minister, The Observer reported, traveled in a Falcon 50 of the Portuguese Air Force and watched the Europa League football final match between Sevilla and Roma, the Italian team led by José Mourinho, along with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The BE coordinator, Mariana Mortágua, finds it “regrettable that the Prime Minister decided to stop an official trip to watch football, that he used money from an official state trip to make that stop. I am even more sorry that he has seen football game next to an authoritarian leader [Viktor Órban] extreme right in a country like Hungary”.
The PCP secretary-general believes that “it is not normal” for the prime minister to stop in Budapest to watch a match while traveling on an Air Force plane and says that the situation should be clarified.
“Because it’s news, of course it has to be clarified by the Prime Minister,” he defended, since “it’s not normal, but all the country’s problems were this one.”
Liberal Initiative leader Rui Rocha joked that it is the “normality of socialist governance”. On Twitter, he summarizes the criticism in one sentence: “The Falcon used by António Costa made a stopover in Budapest so that the Prime Minister could watch the Europa League final together with Viktor Órban (…) Anyway, nothing news. Another normal Friday of socialist governance.”
The same tone, irony, is used by the leader of the JSD who resorted to Costa’s words when he said in January 2022 during a debate that “with me [ Ventura] will not succeed”. Alexandre Poço recreated the sentence: “For all democrats: António Costa will not succeed.”
Paulo Rangel, PSD Vice-President and Member of the European Parliament, demands an explanation from António Costa, but does not expect great answers because there is “a pattern of behavior of evading responsibility”.
“It is certainly a private visit and this cannot be done in public,” he insisted.
Miguel Poiares Maduro, former deputy minister of regional development in the Passos Coelho government, stressed that “in a serious state, a prime minister using a state jet for an event outside his public agenda was the end of that prime minister’s political path,” he said . .
Former PS MEP Ana Gomes links the meeting between Costa and Orbán on Twitter to the possibility, many admit, of the PS secretary-general wanting a European position.
And three words were enough: “A joyful campaign”.
André Ventura, on the other hand, stressed the possibility that “we may even face illegality” because the “Prime Minister does not own the state equipment that is paid for by the taxpayer (…) Which means, on the somehow, State equipment was used for purposes which, while not secret, were more private than political or public”.
Source: DN
