José João Abrantes
José João Abrantes leaves for “personal and institutional reasons”, an agreement must be reached between PSD, Chega and PS for the four judges.
The President of the Constitutional Court (TC), José João Abrantesannounced today that it has decided give up to the functions of judge of this court, with effect from the inauguration of his replacement, for “personal and institutional reasons”.
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.
“Today I communicated to the plenary of the Court 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 occupy 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 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 says that, “on the basis of this decision, taken some time ago, are exclusively personal and institutional reasonshaving nothing to do with any other circumstances.”
“I did not do so 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 leavingjust as leaving the Court with just ten judges would not be the case”, he explains.
The president of the TC also invokes the “processes of oversight preventive measure 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 for 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 autonomous evaluative criteria of the Constitution, 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 for 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.
Of the four judges to be replaced by parliament, José António Teles Pereira and Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro, who resigned from their position on October 1st last year, 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.
As highlighted by , this exit increases the probability of havingr agreement between PSD, Chega and PS for the election of the four judges.
Hugo Soares, parliamentary leader of the PSD, had said: “In order for there to be an understanding between the three parties for the election of members of the Constitutional Court, it was effectively important that four seats were discussed”.
If José João Abrantes’ resignation were to take immediate effect, 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.
