Chega Formalises a Parliamentary Inquiry Commission Into Operação Influencer Targeting António Costa Over Lithium, Hydrogen and Start Campus — PSD Refuses, So the CPI Walks Into the September Forced-Activation Window

Chega formalised on Saturday its parliamentary motion for a Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito (CPI) into the Operação Influencer case — the wiretap-and-search investigation that brought down the Costa government in November 2023 and that the Ministério Público has now sliced into two parallel files at Direção Central de Investigação and the Lisbon prosecutors' office. The CPI is the procedural step that converts a political demand into a structured parliamentary investigation with the power to compel testimony. Without majority support, however, the commission cannot be installed before September, when Assembleia da República's auto-activation rule kicks in for opposition-tabled inquiry motions held over from the spring session.

The three projects Chega wants on the table

The motion targets three specific policy files where Chega argues that António Costa and members of his government may have intervened beyond the boundary of regulated decision-making. First, lithium exploration at the Romano (Montalegre) and Barroso (Boticas) concessions, where the licensing process started under the Costa government and where the public-procurement file is now part of the Ministério Público's active prosecution. Second, the Sines green-hydrogen complex, which received PRR support and EU-funded grid upgrades. Third, the Start Campus data-centre project in Sines's industrial zone — the file that produced the most contested wiretap material in the Operação Influencer release. Chega frames the three projects as a coordinated 'influence' channel.

The Christmas Eve 2022 phone call

The Chega filing cites the leaked wiretap material that captured then-Prime Minister Costa speaking with Diogo Lacerda Machado, the lawyer at the centre of the Start Campus thread, on Christmas Eve 2022. The party argues the call 'contradicts' Costa's previous parliamentary statements on his involvement with the project's licensing trajectory. The Ministério Público's working file already includes the call; the CPI would add a parliamentary forum where Costa could be summoned, under oath, to reconstruct the timeline.

The math: no majority, so September

PSD's parliamentary leadership has stated it will not viabilise a CPI 'while an investigation is ongoing' — the line is the same one the party has used against three earlier opposition-tabled CPIs in this legislature. The position takes the AD coalition and the 91 deputies of the Government bloc off the table for Chega's motion. The 50 Chega seats plus the PS's 78 — if Pedro Nuno Santos's party moves — would still fall short of the 116-deputy threshold for the immediate constitution of a CPI. The arithmetic only flips with PCP, Bloco de Esquerda, Livre and IL all on board, which the spring tape does not support. The motion therefore parks until the rentrée, where the standing-orders' auto-activation route makes the CPI procedurally inevitable.

What this does to the AD legislative load

A September CPI on Operação Influencer drops on top of an already-dense autumn parliamentary calendar: the Orçamento do Estado 2027 debate, the Trabalho XXI labour bill third-reading, the SNS doctor package's parliamentary ratification, and the Castro Almeida industrial-licensing simplification we covered separately this morning. For Luís Montenegro's Government, the CPI's political utility is double-edged. It re-anchors media attention on the previous PS administration, but it also forces sitting ministers — Energy, Environment, Internal Affairs — to testify on inherited file decisions that span both administrations. For Pedro Nuno Santos, the CPI is the first major parliamentary stress test of the PS's post-Costa positioning.

Sources: PÚBLICO, 10 May 2026; Chega parliamentary motion text; Assembleia da República register; Ministério Público Operação Influencer file communiqués.