BRUSSELS — When António Costa takes office as president of the European Council on Dec. 1, he will become the first person from an ethnic minority to head one of the European Union’s most important institutions.
In his first interview with POLITICO since he was tapped for the post in June, the former Portuguese prime minister, who is of Goan-Mozambican descent, said he was keen to use his Indian heritage to redefine Europe’s often unequal relationship with Asia, Africa and South America.
While the EU has historically had good relations with the United States, its complicated colonial history has sometimes hindered its ability to forge strong ties with the rest of the world.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for example, the EU has struggled to wrangle support from African, Asian and Latin American countries in international forums like the United Nations.
As president of the Council, Costa can facilitate negotiations between the EU’s national leaders and represent the bloc — along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas — on the international stage.
Speaking in a conference room in the headquarters of the Council in central Brussels, Costa said he was eager to change the status quo with what he described as a “multipolar world.”
“We need to have closer relations with different regions and countries that are relevant in a world that is much more than the G7 or the G20,” he said. “This is a world composed of 195 countries.”
Costa boasted that on a visit to India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally given him an overseas citizen card that grants him indefinite residency and work privileges — and said that his “cultural closeness, knowledge and sometimes even linguistic skills … obviously help, and I hope to use them in the service of the EU.”
The incoming Council president’s paternal grandfather was from Goa, an Indian state that ceased to be part of the fading Portuguese empire just months after Costa’s birth. His paternal grandmother, meanwhile, was French-Mozambican.
Costa’s background distinguishes him from the previous holders of top EU posts, most of whom have a hard time connecting with continents where Europe’s representatives are sometimes dismissed as condescending interlopers.
During his eight years as Portuguese prime minister, Costa built up close relationships with overseas leaders, especially those from the African, Asian and South American countries that are part of the Lusophone Community of Portuguese-speaking countries. His personal charisma, and Portugal’s status as a small, unthreatening country, helped forge strong economic ties and even a free-movement agreement with former colonies.
“I think there are clear signs that Europe wants to have a 360[-degree] vision of the world, not a unidirectional one,” Costa added.
Ready to talk
As prime minister, Costa became famous for securing unlikely political agreements in Lisbon — dealmaking skills that are in high demand in an increasingly polarized EU.
Political leaders in France and Germany, the traditional heavyweights within the Council, are distracted by domestic crises, while ascendant Euroskeptic and ultranationalist politicians are taking leadership roles across the bloc.
Against that backdrop, Costa’s challenge will be to get the 27 national leaders who sit on the Council to agree to a common position on European defense; forge a response to a potential trade war with the U.S. and China; and agree the bloc’s next seven-year budget.
The president-elect said he was confident the elite group would be able to reach consensus agreements, just as it did during the eight years he sat at the table as Portuguese prime minister.
“Even at the most critical moments — like the ones we’ve experienced since Russia invaded Ukraine — the Council has always managed to take decisions,” he said. “Sometimes it has required holding another summit, but it’s always been possible to reach an agreement.”
In preparation for his new gig, he has spent the fall visiting the bloc’s 27 heads of government — a listening tour he plans to repeat every September, coinciding with the start of the new political season.
“My main mission is to guarantee unity between everyone … And that means being in permanent contact,” he said.
Unlike his predecessor, Belgian Charles Michel, Costa said he was eager to be in regular contact with Commission President von der Leyen.
Michel and von der Leyen spent most of the five years they held the top EU jobs feuding, to the point that the EU’s two most important institutions virtually ceased to communicate.
Costa, by contrast, has a seemingly warm relationship with von der Leyen, with whom he bonded when Portugal held the rotating presidency of the Council of Europe in 2021. The former Portuguese prime minister said he had worked closely with von der Leyen on policies aimed at dealing with the Covid crisis and the rollout of the EU’s recovery plan, and that since September their teams had been preparing the “coordinated and harmonious” rollout of the new political term.
Costa’s selection as Council president represents a reversal of fortune for a politician whom many wrote off just one year ago, when he was forced to step down as Portuguese prime minister in the wake of an influence-peddling scandal.
Costa was named as the subject of an official investigation related to the affair. But in the 12 months that have elapsed since then, no legal charges have been filed against him, and it’s widely expected that the probe will be dropped.
The president-elect said the episode had been “sad,” but that it was important to let the justice system do its work. The affair doesn’t appear to have done long-term damage to his prestige in Brussels, where European leaders and officials are palpably excited about him.
That may say more about their eagerness to finally be rid of Michel, who will be remembered as a self-obsessed Council president with a tendency to disrupt summits and grandstand abroad.
“We expect a lot from Costa and his team,” said one senior EU diplomat. “But, of course, the bar is so low.”
Barbara Moens contributed reporting.
The post The EU is about to have its first president from an ethnic minority appeared first on Politico.
