PS Aligns With PSD to Kill Chega's Constitutional Revision Push on Tuesday 12 May — Socialist Secretariado Nacional Says the Portuguese 'Do Not Ask for a Constitutional Revision' Inside the 30-Day Counter-Project Window

The constitutional revision process that André Ventura opened on Thursday 7 May, hoping it would force the PSD to the negotiating table, walked into its first wall on Tuesday 12 May. By the time the day closed, both of the only parties large enough to reach the two-thirds threshold required to amend the Constitution had said publicly that they would not be tabling any project of their own — and that they would vote against Chega's.

Lusa picked up the formal Socialist position late on Tuesday from a source inside the PS Secretariado Nacional, the executive body that had spent the afternoon at the party headquarters in Lisbon. The line travelled almost verbatim into the Observador wire that opened Wednesday morning: "Os portugueses não pedem uma revisão constitucional, pedem soluções para o custo de vida, para a habitação, para a saúde, para os salários e rendimentos." Or, in plain English: revising the Constitution is not what the country is asking for — bread-and-butter policy is.

The Two Decisions That Landed on Tuesday

The PSD position came first, on the radio. António Rodrigues, vice-president of the PSD parliamentary group, told the TSF programme Na Ordem do Dia on Tuesday that the social-democrats will not be filing any constitutional revision project inside the 30-day window opened by Chega's deposit, and that they will block Chega's proposals on the floor. "É claro e é óbvio. Nós desde o início desta legislatura que afirmámos que, a fazermos uma aproximação à questão da revisão constitucional, apenas a faríamos na segunda metade da legislatura," Rodrigues said. PSD parliamentary leader Hugo Soares had already drawn the same line on Thursday 7 May when Chega delivered its draft — without committing as cleanly to the no-counter-project posture.

The PS decision crystallised the picture. The Secretariado Nacional met on Tuesday afternoon, the source told Lusa, and ruled out a Socialist project of its own. The PS, the source added, "regista com agrado a posição que o PSD transmitiu por um alto responsável do seu grupo parlamentar" — diplomatic shorthand for: we are happy PSD is not playing along, and we are not going to either.

What Chega Tabled on Thursday 7 May

Chega's project, formally deposited at the Assembleia da República on Thursday 7 May 2026, is titled "Uma Constituição para todos os portugueses". André Ventura presented it as an attempt to "alterar a identidade" of the constitutional text. The headline strands, as Ventura outlined them to the press that day: stripping out what Chega frames as the Constitution's ideological residue from 1976; rewriting the economic chapter that Chega reads as too statist; tightening the political system through fewer deputados and tighter elected-voter linkage; and introducing a loss-of-nationality clause for those who "gravely attack the fundamental values of the State." Iniciativa Liberal had announced on 4 May that it would also submit a counter-project on its own track, focused on judicial-system and economic-rights provisions.

Ventura, on Thursday, said he was holding open the door to PSD: "Se apresentámos agora é porque achamos que há condições para uma calendarização conjunta (…) Espero que haja até final do ano um memorando de entendimento constitucional." He floated, as one mechanism, a "suspensão extraordinária dos trabalhos" approved jointly by PSD and Chega in plenary to give the revision room to breathe. The week between Thursday's deposit and Tuesday's PS-PSD wall closed that door.

The 30-Day Window and the Two-Thirds Wall

Under Article 285(2) of the Constituição da República Portuguesa, the moment a project of constitutional revision is deposited in the Assembleia, every other party gets thirty days to deposit a project of its own. Chega's clock started on Thursday 7 May; the deadline therefore lands on Saturday 6 June 2026. After that, no further projects can be tabled inside this revision window. PSD's announcement that it will not be filing — and the PS Secretariado Nacional's matching decision — means the universe of projects that will go to specialty committee is, on current information, two: Chega's and IL's.

The arithmetic past that point is where the process closes. Article 286(1) of the Constitution requires uma maioria de dois terços dos Deputados em efetividade de funções — two-thirds of all sitting deputados — to approve any constitutional amendment in final overall vote. With the Assembleia at 230 seats, that means 154 votes minimum. Chega's bench, even taken with Iniciativa Liberal and CDS, does not get close. The only mathematically viable revision is one that PSD and PS both sign off on. With both parties saying explicitly on Tuesday that they will not, the revision the country will be debating for the next month has no path to enactment.

What Happens Next

The 30-day window now becomes performative. Chega and IL will likely use the period to put their texts into specialty committee, generate floor speeches, and force PSD and PS to vote each clause down on the record — which is itself the point for Ventura, who has signalled he will run the next election partly on the question of whether PSD's reluctance to revise the Constitution makes the country ungovernable from the right. PSD's two-track answer — "second half of the legislature" from Hugo Soares, "obviously not now" from António Rodrigues — buys time. The earliest plausible reactivation of the file, taking Rodrigues at his word, is 2027.

For the Government, the consequence is more immediate. The Pacote Fiscal Habitação that President Seguro promulgated on Monday evening 12 May, the migration package that walked out of the 7 May Council of Ministers, and the industrial-licensing reform that Castro Almeida is now pushing into Parliament are all ordinary-law files, not constitutional ones — and all rely on the same PSD-Chega tactical bench that Tuesday's PS move has just complicated. The PS letting PSD off the hook on the Constitution is, on the same day, a marker that the Socialists will not be making PSD's parliamentary life easy on the housing and migration tracks either. The constitutional revision that was meant to put a wedge between PSD and PS instead pushed them, for a single Tuesday afternoon, onto the same side of the table. On the criminal-courts and parliamentary-politics side of the file, our 4 June read on the Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa annulling the Juízo Local Criminal's July 2025 acquittal of Cristina Rodrigues — now a Chega deputy, formerly PAN — in the PAN email-blackout case, with the retrial order extending to co-defendant Sara Fernandes, the CPP Article 379 nullity route framing the annulment and the Lei do Cibercrime dano informático and acesso ilegítimo charges back on the table sets the latest reference. On the Lei de Política Criminal, DGRSP prison-work, fogos florestais prevention and Assembleia da República criminal-policy-mandate side of the file, our 12 June read on the Assembleia da República greenlighting the Lei de Política Criminal 2026-2028 with the DGRSP prison-crew forest-cleaning mandate, the PSP/GNR pat-down powers in zonas de criminalidade de impacto social, and the priority-crime list headed by arson, organised crime and corruption on the PSD-Chega-IL-CDS yes-block sets the latest reference. On the retirement-age architecture, Pensão de Velhice, Fator de Sustentabilidade, Lei 110/2009 contributory-regime code, Concertação Social and Chega Reforma-65 demand side of the file, our 15 June read on Chega pinning the Reforma-65 demand on a written compromisso from PM Luís Montenegro — calendarised reduction of the Idade Normal de Acesso à Pensão de Velhice to 65, or alternatively a 40-year carreira contributiva, framed as Chega's non-negotiable condition across the Concertação Social calendar and the OE2027 cycle sets the latest reference.