The meeting of the Council of State on the enlargement process and the financial and economic reforms of the European Union started this Tuesday around 10:50 am at the Palácio da Cidadela in Cascais, district of Lisbon, with four absent.
According to a source from the Presidency of the Republic, the President of the Constitutional Court, João Caupers, the Ombudsman, Maria Lúcia Amaral, the President of the Regional Government of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque, and the adviser Leonor Beleza will not participate in the meeting.
This meeting, which started 20 minutes late, takes place on a morning when several roads in the Lisbon district were closed due to the heavy rains that fell since dawn and caused flooding.
The war in Ukraine, provoked by the Russian invasion on 24 February this year, has revived the debate on the enlargement of the European Union.
At the end of November, the prime minister believed that “with the current institutional structure, with the current budgetary architecture, the European Union is not able to live up to the expectations it is now creating” for Ukraine and other countries that previously requested accession.
António Costa defended that, “if these expectations were not a mere sympathetic political statement at times, the European Union must restructure itself profoundly if it is not to implode because of the new accessions”.
This is the 27th meeting of the Council of State convened by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa since he took office as President of the Republic in March 2016.
The previous meeting of the political body for consultation with the President of the Republic took place on October 28 and had on the agenda the “analysis of the economic and social situation in Portugal”.
The Council of State, which is chaired by the President of the Republic, has as its inherent members the holders of the offices of President of the Assembly of the Republic, Prime Minister, President of the Constitutional Court, Ombudsman, Presidents of Regional Governments and former Presidents of the Republic.
Under the Constitution, it also includes five citizens designated by the Head of State for the period corresponding to the term of office, and five elected by the Assembly of the Republic, in accordance with the principle of proportional representation, for the period corresponding with the duration of the legislature.
When he started his second term, on March 9, 2021, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa appointed the writer Lídia Jorge as Councilor of State and renamed former CDS-PP leader António Lobo Xavier, former PSD president Luís Marques Mendes, the president of the Champalimaud Foundation, Leonor Beleza and the neuroscientist António Damásio.
Following the parliamentary elections held on January 30 this year, the Assembly of the Republic elected Carlos César, Manuel Alegre and António Sampaio da Nóvoa, nominated by the PS, Francisco Pinto Balsemão and Miguel Cadilhe, nominated by the PSD, to the Council of State.
Source: DN
