Following the audience granted today by the President of the Republic to the Secretary General of the Socialist Party, Dr. António Costa, the Presidency of the Republic publishes the following note:

“Opinions received at the meetings held with social partners and institutions and civil society individualities, confirmed that the continuity in office of the XX Constitutional Government, limited to the practice of the necessary actions to ensure the management of public affairs would not be attuned with national interests.

This situation would be maintained for an indefinite length of time, given the impossibility, dictated by the Constitution, to wait until April of next year, to dissolve Parliament and call for a general election.

The President of the Republic duly noted the answer of the Secretary General of the Socialist Party to the doubts evoked by the documents subscribed by the Left Wing Block, by the Portuguese Communist Party and by the Ecologist Party “The Greens”, as to the stability and durability of a minority government of the Socialist Party, within the period of a legislature.

As such, the President of the republic decided, after hearing the political parties represented in Parliament, to designate Dr. António Costa as Prime Minister”