The sweltering summer of Luís Montenegro at the head of the Government of Portugal

It sounds like the plot of a noir novel, but it's a scandal that has shaken the Portuguese Government. A trailer with chemical precursors to manufacture cocaine that had been seized in an anti-drug operation in 2024 appeared among the trucks of a construction company owned by a friend of Luís Neves, Minister of the Interior, who had some renovations done on a property by the entrepreneur… and who, as the current minister, during his time as director of the Judicial Police (PJ), awarded several contracts to the company.

A complex plot that, like the twists of a cord, has become entangled around the Executive of the conservative Luís Montenegro, who formed a minority government with the backing of the socialists and the ultra-right Chega.

Since winning the elections first in April 2024 and then, in an early call, in May 2025, Montenegro has had more worries than satisfactions. The biggest setback has been perhaps the rejection of Parliament to his labor reform, the most ambitious initiative of his mandate, last month, but the Neves case is not far behind.

The polls do not smile at him either: the recovery of the Socialist Party, whose candidate won the presidential elections in February and now leads the polls, has left Montenegro's conservative Democratic Alliance in second or even third place, behind the ultra-right Chega, depending on the voting projections.

The one from PolitPro, updated last Thursday, confirms a 7% drop in Montenegro's formation since May 2025, when voters gave him a second chance, and a 5.7% rise in socialism. But another one published two weeks ago by Diário de Notícias gives the ultra-right the advantage over Montenegro's party.

The average of the polls still gives him a second place, but threatened by the ultra-right. Apart from the usual summer fires, which inopportunely caught Montenegro in the party's box during the Portuguese national team's match against Croatia in the World Cup in Toronto, another one of his ministers, the Minister of Education, is also in the spotlight due to the failure of the process of digitalizing the qualifications of the access exams to the university.

It seems a less toxic setback than the Interior minister's soap opera, but the opposition takes advantage of everything and, paradoxically, there will be a parliamentary debate on the exams, but not on the Neves case.

After a two-year period marked by the repetition of elections, and overcome the vertigo of the possible arrival of Chega's candidate to the presidency of the country, the center-right Executive is now being overtaken by the left and by the right, as demonstrated by the rejection of the labor reform, which aimed to flexibilize the labor market and which was wrecked by a pincer of the parliamentary left and Chega.

The scandal of the trailer, which motivated the opening of an investigation by the Prosecutor's Office, was theoretically settled on Wednesday, when Neves, in a press conference, admitted possible irregularities, but no illegality in the transfer of the vehicle, which appeared hooked to one of the trucks of Construbarcelos, the company owned by his friend.

The minister, who said he had the full support of Montenegro, not only reiterated his intention to remain in office but also boasted of having saved money for the public treasury by accepting the company's proposal to store the trailer and the ammonia drums it contained for free.

“I would do it again, it was an act of pure and simple good management,” Neves explained, ensuring that this saved “between 3,000 and 4,000 euros in rent” of any warehouse, or the 150,000 that would have cost its destruction.

This last task falls on the Judicial Police, which lacks budget. Neves enjoyed an excellent reputation during his time as head of the PJ, but his relationship with Construbarcelos now raises other doubts: the contracts worth around 1.9 million euros that the company received from the PJ, and the renovation of a ministerial property, with alleged irregularities.

Neves directed the PJ between 2018 and last February, and the awards to the company were made between 2020 and 2025. The moderate amount of the contracts theoretically plays in his favor, since the PJ tendered a total of 27 million euros in that period, and only 8% went to Construbarcelos.

Neves considers that his reputation of three decades of public service has been damaged, as his name has been associated, even tangentially, with drug trafficking, the subtraction of evidence, and the violation of the chain of custody of the same.

But he has insisted that none of the errors committed justifies a charge. With the country on fire, as unfortunately happens every summer, there are few satisfactions for Montenegro.

If anything, the 2.5% growth of GDP in the second quarter in annual terms, an advance of 0.8% compared to the first. After Neves' press conference, the Government considers that the worst has passed, although the pressure on Montenegro does not subside.

The more than two weeks that, according to local media, Neves spent preparing his appearance before the media sound to many like a false closure of the crisis, a clearance ball to corner to avoid danger in the area... of the Prime Minister.

But the ghost of instability that has surrounded the exercise of the leader does not cease: if in February the previous Interior minister was forced to resign due to the catastrophic management of storm Kristin, Montenegro himself has not been exempt from public and political scrutiny.

Although the Prosecutor's Office dropped an investigation into his family company in December, which was the origin of the political crisis that brought down his Government and forced him to call early elections in May 2025, the politician has again been the subject of scrutiny in February for the works on his home, for alleged cost overruns.

The underlying tide has been going on for a long time, while the PS leader, José Luís Carneiro, talks about the end of a political cycle and offers himself as a guarantee.