El verano al rojo vivo de Luís Montenegro al frente del Gobierno de Portugal

The storyline resembles a black novel, but it escalates into a scandal that has shaken the Portuguese government. A trailer containing precursor chemicals for cocaine manufacture, which had been seized in an anti-drug operation in 2024, surfaced among the trucks of a contractor who is a friend of Luis Neves, the Interior Minister, to whom the businessman had carried out renovations on a property and who, during his tenure as Director of the Judicial Police (PJ), awarded several contracts to the businessman.

A tangled plot that, like the turns of a cord, has entangled around the Executive of the conservative Luis Montenegro, who formed a minority government with the support of the Socialists and the radicals of Chega. Since winning the elections in April 2024 and then in an early call in May 2025, Montenegro has faced more setbacks than satisfactions.

The biggest setback might be the rejection of his labor reform by Parliament last month, the boldest initiative of his mandate, but the Neves case is not far behind. The polls are not smiling at him: the recovery of the Socialist Party, whose candidate won the presidential primaries in February and now leads the polls, has pushed the conservative Alliance Democratic of Montenegro to second or even third place, behind the ultraredist Chega, according to the projection forecasts.

The PolitPro report, updated on Thursday, shows a drop of 7% for Montenegro's formation since May 2025, when voters gave him a second chance, and a rise for the Socialist in the polls. Another published two weeks ago by Diário de Notícias gives the ultraredist a lead over Montenegro's party. Besides the usual summer fires, which unfortunately caught Montenegro at the podium of his party against Croatia in the World Cup match in Toronto, another minister of his, the one for Education, is also in the crosshairs for the failure of the process of digitizing the qualifications of the university entrance exams.

It seems a less toxic setback than the Interior's mess, but the opposition has nothing to lose and, paradoxically, debate on the exams will happen in Parliament, but not on the Neves case. After a biennium marked by repeated elections and overcoming the frenzy of the possible arrival of Chega's presidential candidate to the Executive of the center-right, now they are advancing from the left and from the right, as demonstrated by the rejection of the labor reform, which aimed to flexibilize the labor market and which sank due to a parliamentary clamp from the left and Chega.

The scandal of the trailer, which prompted an investigation by the Prosecution, was theoretically buried on Wednesday when Neves admitted possible irregularities but no illegality in the transfer of the vehicle, which appeared hitched to one of the trucks of the fleet of Construbarcelos, the company of his friend. The minister, who said he had the full support of Montenegro, not only reiterated his intention to stay in the job but also presumed to have saved money for the public purse by accepting the company's offer to store the trailer and the ammonia drums for free.

"I would do it again, it was pure and simple good management," Neves explained, saying that this saved "between 3,000 and 4,000 euros in rental" of any storage facility or the 150,000 it would have cost to destroy it. The latter task falls to the Judicial Police, which is short on budget. Neves enjoyed a good reputation during his tenure at the PJ but now his relationship with Construbarcelos raises new doubts: the contracts worth nearly 1.9 million euros that the company received from the PJ and the renovation of a property of the minister, with alleged irregularities.

Neves directed the PJ between 2018 and last February, and the contracts were awarded between 2020 and 2025. The modest amount of contracts theoretically plays in his favor because the PJ auctioned a total of 27 million euros during this period, and only 8% went to Construbarcelos. Neves considers that his reputation from three decades of public service has been damaged by being tangentially associated with drug trafficking, the theft of evidence, and the violation of the chain of custody of the same.

But he has insisted that none of the mistakes committed justifies an indictment. With the country on fire, as unfortunately happens every summer, few are Montenegro's satisfactions. If anything, the 2.5% growth in GDP in the second quarter compared to the previous year, an advance of 0.8% compared to the first, is his only comfort.

After Neves' press conference, the Government considers that the worst is already over, although the pressure on Montenegro does not wane. The over two weeks that Neves spent preparing his appearance before the media seem like many false starts for a crisis, precariously placed at the corners of the goal to avoid danger in the penalty area... of the Chief of Government.

However, the ghost of instability that has surrounded the mandate is not leaving him alone: if in February the previous Interior Minister had to resign due to the disastrous management of the storm Kristin, Montenegro himself has not escaped the public and political scrutiny. Although the Prosecution closed an investigation in December on his family company, the origin of the political crisis that toppled his government and forced him to call early elections in May 2025, he has been subjected to scrutiny again in February due to works at his home with alleged overruns.

The tide of background comes from far away, while the leader of the PS, José Luís Carneiro, speaks of the end of a political cycle and offers himself as a guarantor.