The president of the Constitutional Court (TC), José João Abrantes, announced this Tuesday that he has decided to resign as judge of this court, with effect from the inauguration of his replacement, for “personal and institutional reasons”.
“Today I communicated to the Court’s plenary session my resignation from the positions of president and advisor judge of the TC, with effect from the inauguration of the advisor judge that the Assembly of the Republic will elect to fill the vacancy now created”, reads a note to the media signed by José João Abrantes.
In this statement, the judge and president of the TC states that he has decided to resign from his duties “with a sense of responsibility and respecting established practices that have contributed to the institutional solidity of the Court”.
José João Abrantes states that, “the basis of this decision, taken some time ago, are exclusively personal and institutional reasons, having nothing to do with any other circumstances”.
“I didn’t do it before, although, at an opportune moment, I communicated this intention to my colleagues, because it would not have been responsible for me to trigger the election of a new president with four judges who would be leaving, just as it would not have been to leave the Court with only ten judges”, he explains.
The president of the TC also invokes the “preventive inspection processes of constitutionality and electoral processes (municipal elections and presidential elections)”, to justify the moment chosen for his resignation, which he considers to be “the most appropriate to the best defense of the Court’s interests”.
“I will leave with the awareness of my duty fulfilled. The STF, maintaining its concern to preserve an immaculate relationship with the other powers, based on scrupulous mutual respect for each other’s competencies, has never given up exercising, to the fullest extent, its own powers of assessing the validity of norms, in the light, solely, of the Constitution’s autonomous evaluative criteria, thus continuing the consolidation of constitutional justice that meets the demands of the democratic rule of law”, he adds.
Counting on this resignation, Parliament must now elect four new judges to the TC, to replace José António Teles Pereira and Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro, who left by resignation after exceeding nine years in office, Joana Fernandes Costa, who has also exceeded nine years in office, and José João Abrantes.
PSD, PS and Chega have an understanding for the election of judges
“We understand from the three parliamentary groups that the elections for the Constitutional Court should be held at once, when four judges are elected”stated Hugo Soares, arguing that it would make sense to wait for the departure of José João Abrantes and thus prevent the elections for the Constitutional Court were “sliced”.
Asked whether the PSD intended to propose two names and the PS and Chega one each, the PSD parliamentary leader did not want to definitively confirm this distribution, but stated that the responsibility for the proposal is closed and “it is evident”.
“It seems clear to me what this composition will be like (…) It is a three-way understanding so that the composition of the Constitutional Court can be definitively made during the joint election of four members of the Constitutional Court”, he said.
Of the four judges to be replaced by parliament, José António Teles Pereira and Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro, who resigned from their positions on October 1 last year, they had been elected on a proposal from the PSD, while Joana Fernandes Costa and José João Abrantes were elected on a proposal from the PS.
If José João Abrantes’ resignation were to take effect immediately, the current TC judges would have to elect a new president now. Therefore, this election will only take place after the new judges to be elected by parliament take office.
Under the law, the president and vice-president of the TC are elected by secret vote, to hold office for four and a half years, a period equivalent to half the term of office of a TC judge.
José João Abrantes, professor at the Faculty of Law of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, specialist in labor law, has been a judge at the TC since July 2020. He was elected president of the TC on April 26, 2023.
