Chega has become the eighth right-wing populist party with the largest parliamentary representation in the European Union countries. A political tendency that arrived in Portugal later, but with force.
The legislative elections have written a new chapter in Chega's meteoric rise over the last six years. From 1.3% of the votes in 2019, electing only himself, André Ventura rose to 22.6% in last Sunday's elections and 58 deputies, numbers that are expected to rise further with the counting of votes from emigrant circles. Portugal is no longer a country that stood out in Europe for not valuing the radical and populist right in electoral terms and now has one of the parliaments with the greatest representation.
André Ventura categorically rejects the “far-right” label for his party, but he frequently displays his closeness to the radical right-wing political forces that have been gaining traction in Europe, such as the French National Union, the Spanish Vox or the Dutch Freedom Party.
On election night, the Chega leader made a point of highlighting the congratulations he received from his European political family , some of which were made public on the social network X. Marine Le Pen, from the National Union, sent “warm congratulations” to her “friend” André Ventura, for his tenacity and determination, which “allowed the construction of a powerful and popular patriotic movement”. Santiago Abascal, president of Vox, took the opportunity to state that “patriotic and conservative forces are growing in all European nations despite the sanitary cordons and the media hegemony of nationalist parties”.
With the result of the last legislative elections, Chega became the eighth populist and radical right party with the greatest parliamentary representation in the countries of the European Union , surpassing the 20.8% of votes obtained by the Alternative for Germany in February and well above the 12.4% obtained by Vox in 2023. Considering the different parties in each country , Portugal is the ninth where these political forces have the most weight .
José Filipe Pinto, a professor at Lusófona University, frames Chega’s rise in the context of “cultural or identity-based populism that is growing rapidly in Europe”, a phenomenon “that arrived late in Portugal” . Viktor Orbán has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, Law and Justice came to power in Poland in 2005 and Matteo Salvini’s League formed a coalition government in 2018, becoming the first radical right-wing party to come to power in Western Europe.
“Populism in the Iberian Peninsula has always existed, but a socio-economic populism, very much connoted with socialist ideology,” says José Filipe Pinto, giving as an example the PCP and the Left Bloco, in Portugal, and Podemos, Spain. “There was no cultural or identity populism that is based on a nationalist and conservative ideology,” he continues. The three most recent phenomena have been in Germany, with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Netherlands, with the Geert Wilders Freedom Party, and in France with the National Union. The Enmos becomes the fourth example,” he said.
The rapid growth of André Ventura’s party is not surprisingly Javier Carbonell, a political analyst at the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think tank. “It is very normal for far-right parties to be outside the political system and suddenly become very relevant actors in a short period of time,” he says.
“This is because these parties are not only convincing new voters, but there are many voters who already agree with the far-right’s positions on immigration or because they have a bad opinion of the political system, but they do not vote for these parties because they are very stigmatized. But if a politician appears with a good image or an event that normalizes the extreme right and this social stigma is broken, then the rise is very fast,” explains Javier Carbonell.
According to the ECO survey, only four European Union countries do not have radical right-wing parties with parliamentary representation: Ireland, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Malta. In five, the support of the electorate does not reach 10%, as in Czechs, Greece or Denmark. There are another seven of the 10% and 20% and 12 above of this last bar. Another political phenomenon that is gaining expression is the extreme left populism, of which are examples of the party of Bulgarian Prime Minister Robert Fico or the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance in Germany.
“For at least 25 years (since the 21st century) that has been attended in Europe all the tripling of the average votes of the so-called Radical Right Populist Parties,” says Riccardo Marchi, an Italian historian living in Portugal who has dedicated himself to the study of radical right ones. “The initial secret of success was to realize that large swaths of the voters of the European countries were increasingly dissatisfied with the functioning of democracies,” says the researcher of the Center for International Studies of ISCTE-IUL, adding that “they are not anti-democratic voters (in fact the polls have been in support of more than 70% of the democratic system by the voters), but of dissatisfied with the fact that the elites are not incumbentgeriram o poder.
In right-wing populist parties there are cases in which this partisan area is clearly dominated by a single force, such as the Freedom Party in Austria and others in which it is dispersed by several parties, such as Romania, where the Alliance for the Union of the Romanians, SOS Romania and the Youth Party have garnered 32.5% of the vote in the December parliamentary elections. Strong popular support that was not yet enough to secure the victory of ultranationalist George Simion in the presidential elections last Sunday, losing to centrist Nicu?or Dan.
“The acceleration of globalization, multiculturalism with mass migrations, the European federalist project that were the ingredients of the magic formula of the incumbent elites since the 1990s, began to lose gas in the first decade of the 20th century, resulting in the economic crisis of 2008, the refugees of 2015, the pandemic of 2020, etc, etc. A window of opportunity has been opened for populist parties on both left and right-wing that, in some cases, abandoned the right-left narrative embracing the high-down narrative... People vs. Elite,” notes Riccardo Marchi. For the Italian historian, “all these factors also appeared in Portugal with the difference that here only lately appeared a political entrepreneur available to raise the flag of this formula of radical right-wing populism.”
José Filipe Pinto also sees in the growth of the same roots of other populist European forces. “Taking certain specificities, such as Vox – which owes much of its growth to the defense of maintaining borders in the face of separatist tendencies – the causes are common and are based on the defense of European identity, the danger that in the opinion of these parties represents the arrival of so many immigrants and the high number of asylum seekers, which burdens national budgets.” The researcher, who focuses, among others on the theme of populism, also points to the influence of the “theory of the great substitution”, according to which the higher birth rates of immigrants will lead to a replacement of European cultural identity.
An analysis of the conversations on the X between April 7 and May 19, 2025, released this Wednesday by All Comunicação, concludes that “immigration was by far the most discussed topic, representing more than 22% of the conversations analyzed.” “Immigration has become central in the debate, driven by the rhetoric of the Arrival and the emotional and polarizing logic of social networks.” An analysis of the cloud of terms associated with immigration indicates that the word “it is largely stopped, signaling the centrality of the party in this discussion.” Other common terms are “Portugal”, “country”, “Portuguese” or “Portuguese”, marking the nationalist and identity load.
André Ventura’s party is tied with the PS in the number of deputies (58), but should surpass the Socialists when the votes of the diaspora circles are counted, next Wednesday, the 28th. In the legislative elections of 2024, two of the four terms were for the Arrivals. If this happens, André Ventura will be the leader of the opposition and will see his political profile reinforced internally and externally.
Chega belongs to the group “Patriotas of Europe”, the third largest in the European Parliament, and one of the vice-presidencies is occupied by António Tânger Corrêa. The Full Professor of Lusophone University underlines the congratulatory messages that André Ventura received from the presidents of other parties of his ‘family’, but does not foresee a greater prominence in the EU parliamentary group. “The leader is Jordan Bardella, the formal but not real leader of the National Union. In this group there are eight parties with more MEPs than the There is and some are in power in their countries, such as Fidesz and the League. There will hardly achieve more than vice-presidencies, even if it is expected to grow in the next European elections,” says José Filipe Pinto.
“Enough is always a party of an average EU country, with little weight in the pressure that can be exerted on the authorities of Brussels or the European People’s Party,” Marchi said.
Despite jumping to the top of European countries in the number of votes, the Conce seems still far from coming to power, unlike what already happens in five European Union countries, where populist parties lead the government or are members of coalitions: Hungary, Italy, Finland, Slovakia and Croatia.
André Ventura assures, however, that he will not stop until he is prime minister. For now, he came “officially declaring, before the whole country and safely, that the bipartisanship ended.” The professor of professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa does not align with the vision of the party leader. “Portugal will continue to have a polarized multipartyism – we have 10 parties with parliamentary representation – but at the level of the exercise of power is different, we have a bipartisanship. Bipartisanship only ends if there is no sense of state in the PS. If the PS continues to make the Government viable, make the internal reorganization and constitute itself as an alternative of Government, it will avoid the rise of the Arrivals”, he considers.
Already a scenario of instability will benefit André Ventura. “Neme has not abandoned the initial modality that is anti-system populism. The Arrival will ride the wave of instability to say that the system cannot reform and it must be changed. The Enough will only win elections if bipartisanship fails.”
José Filipe Pinto also advances the possibility of the Arrival moderating his speech. “Poverulism is a way of articulating discourse, aiming at the struggle for political hegemony. Chegatão can moderate his speech and stay at the level of the mainstream, being able to reach the Government and end bipartisanship.”
The researcher insists, however, that “the end of bipartisanship is not an inevitability, but a probability that may result from the lack of democratic culture of the mainstream parties and the enormous capacity for victimization of a populist party.”
Javier Carbonell says polls point to an average support for far-right parties in the European Union around 25 percent, from whom the Armos has now approached. The political analyst considers that “by becoming a normal party, its vote will increase or fall on the same grounds that affect the other parties. Do you have a competent leader, have policies that benefit voters, govern well or badly?”
For the expert in far-right movements, it is difficult to define a successful strategy to stop these parties. But there are mistakes that must be avoided. One of them “is to normalize your ideas, copy your policies, turn more to the right. It can help in the short term, but in the long term it always benefits these types of parties. In general, taking them to the Government fully normalizes them,” he considers.
The plan of Ventura
“The last elections were in fact a political earthquake because they may have opened the door to the Second Republic, in the sense of having structurally modified and once and for all the relationship of force of the First Republic of 1974,” says Riccardo Marchi, who says he does not have the First Republic of 1910, nor with the Estado Novo.
The guest professor of ISCTE-IUL describes even what anticipates the plan of the leader of Chega to reach the prime minister. Faced with the “not not” of the PSD, Riccardo Marchi considers that Chega is obliged to “take the right-wing opposition role to the convergence of the center between AD and PS (the remaining parties are irrelevant), but of responsible opposition that allows the legislature of the minority government of AD, with the intention of in order to replicate the overtaking of the PS, also overtaking the AD and the other parties are irrelevant), but of responsible opposition that allows the legislature of the minority government of the A.D., with the intention of in order to replicate the PS in the way of four years”.
If the PS does not collapse, like the French PS, there will be a tripartatiarization. “Another variable can be a fall in disgrace of Montenegro and the rise to the leadership of the AD of a leader and class more open to the IL-AD-Chega formula, which would put back into play the hypothesis of the bipolarization of the system,” says Marchi, for whom the September autarchic will be a kind of “proof of the 9” of the consolidation of the Arrival system.
The growth of the radical right also poses a threat to the European Union project, says Javier Carbonell. The impact depends on whether or not these parties are in the leadership in government and the size of the country. “The fact that the far right is strong in Portugal is not as serious as if it is strong in France. If a major far-right party comes to power in Germany or France, it could destroy the European Union.” “A Le Pen is worse than three Orbán.”
The political analyst at the European Policy Centre considers that “there is a lot the European Union can do to stop this growth and underlines social issues. “One of the reasons for the growth of the far right is the existence of deep structural problems. One of the biggest is the deterioration of social conditions. One of the most wrong things the European Union has done is to abandon the social pillar”, he says, taking housing as an example, where the EU has no competence.
“At the same time that we have to spend in Defense we also have to spend in the social sphere,” he warns.