Ventura Sets Tuesday as the Deadline, but a Motion of Censure Needs 116 Votes and the PS Is Not Offering Them

André Ventura told reporters in Coimbra on Friday that Chega will table a moção de censura (motion of censure) against the government next Tuesday, 1 September, unless Luís Montenegro removes Luís Neves as Minister of Internal Administration before then. "If we do not get this situation resolved, we will join the appeal the President of the Republic made and we will present a motion of censure on Tuesday, in Parliament," he said.

The claim about the President rests on an anonymously sourced press report that António José Seguro gave the Prime Minister a deadline to move Neves out. Belém has not confirmed it. Ventura is treating it as established: "If the President of the Republic gives a deadline for a minister to leave, it is because that minister has no conditions to continue."

The number that decides it is 116

Article 194 of the Constitution lets any parliamentary group table a censure motion on the execution of the government's programme or on a matter of relevant national interest. Tabling is the easy part. Article 195 sets the consequence: a government must resign only if the motion passes by an absolute majority of the deputies in effectivity of functions. Parliament's own register listed exactly 230 deputies in office on Friday, so the threshold is 116.

Chega is nowhere near 116 on its own, and the only bench large enough to close the gap is the PS, which has made clear it does not consider this the moment to bring the government down, and certainly not behind an initiative that originated with Chega. Without them the motion is arithmetically dead before it is written. Asked on Friday whether the threat weakened the government, the PSD spokesman Sebastião Bugalho answered: "Weaken the government, a threat? I find that very difficult."

A motion filed on Tuesday would be spent almost immediately

One timing detail changes how much this costs Chega. Article 194 says that if a censure motion fails, its signatories cannot present another during the same legislative session, and under Article 174 a legislative session lasts one year and begins on 15 September.

A motion tabled on 1 September therefore falls inside a session with a fortnight left to run. Even if it is debated and defeated, the bar on repeating it lifts on 15 September, when the new session opens. The one-per-session rule barely bites. Article 194 also requires forty-eight hours between tabling and debate, and Parliament's normal sitting period does not resume until 15 September either, so getting the thing onto the floor in early September would take a decision to convene.

Why file something designed to lose

Because losing in public is the point. A censure debate forces every party to state a position on Neves, and it puts the PS and the PSD on the same side of a vote at the precise moment the two are converging on a budget deal. Ventura can then present that photograph as proof that the parties which usually govern protect one another. Chega is separately preparing a request for a parliamentary inquiry into Neves's years running the Judicial Police, and a motion keeps the subject in the news from the first day of parliamentary work rather than the fifth.

The case against Neves has been accumulating all summer: a criminal inquiry over a missing drug-case trailer, a European Public Prosecutor's verification process into 17 police contracts, a Court of Auditors trial, and the service car seized from a convicted drug trafficker that he asked to keep on becoming minister. On Thursday the trafficker's lawyer called that arrangement abusive, saying his client was never told the vehicle had gone to the government. Montenegro publicly backed his minister the same day.

What this means for you

• Government stability: a defeated motion changes nothing legally. This is not a route to an early election unless the PS reverses itself, and it says it will not.
• Watch the budget: the consequential negotiation is the 2027 State Budget, where PS and PSD alignment is the live question and Chega is trying to place itself outside the frame.
• Dates: 1 September is Ventura's deadline. Parliament's normal sitting period restarts on 15 September, and so does the clock on how often a censure motion can be filed.
• Precedent: Chega has reached for this instrument repeatedly and it has never carried. Its real leverage has come from withdrawing votes on legislation, not from motions.

If Neves goes before Tuesday, none of this happens and the inquiry request becomes the vehicle instead. If he stays, Portugal gets a three-day debate about one minister at the opening of the parliamentary year, and a vote whose result everyone already knows.