Engineer Ana Carvalho was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of Volt Portugal and Duarte Costa Vice President, at the conference in Setúbal, but both intend to run the party as co-chairs, an official source told Lusa today.
The second party congress, which took place this weekend, elected the new national bodies for the 2022-2024 biennium, comprising the new leadership and the National Political Commission.
“The new direction of the Volt Portugal is headed by Ana Carvalho and Duarte Costa as Vice President,” the party said in a statement.
An official source in the party said that “both candidates competed in the Volt Portugal elections in the framework of the joint leadership program, where both share the position of co-chairs.”
Ana Carvalho, 26, is an engineer and works in renewable energies, having studied electrical and computer engineering, and joined the party four years ago while studying in Germany, according to Volt Portugal.
“He launched himself into politics through student associations and in defense of LGBTQIA+ rights, he fell in love with the EU’s role and its achievability,” the party said.
In turn, Duarte Costa, 34, from Lisbon, specializes in European climate policies, and graduated in geography from the University of Lisbon with a master’s degree in climate change and policy.
According to information from the party, Duarte Costa “joined the Volt because he believed that solutions to major problems” such as the climate crisis, humanitarian issues on the EU’s borders, combating political extremism and building a prosperous society should be shared by Europeans, saying that “European unity is the The path of unity that Europe needs.
For the National Political Committee, “Members Yannick Shady, André Ira, Katia Sophia Lopez Geralds, Ines Reis dos Santos, Pedro Malhero, Ralph Medernach, Silky Gillen, Susana Joao Montero Carneiro, Tania Girao, Vitor Moreira and Thiago Silva were elected,” he adds. .
Volt Portugal also noted that, in addition to the new national bodies, “several thematic and sectoral proposals were also made and discussed in areas as diverse as universal basic income, for example, or centralization of power”.
On May 24, the former president of Volt Portugal told Lusa that he had resigned from the party because he disagreed with the ideological path that political power had been following at the European and national levels, and was “increasingly centered on the left” and away from the “original matrix”.
“The main reason has to do with ideological issues. Over time, the Volt deviated from what was his original matrix and original ideology to position itself more and more on the left,” said, at the time, Tiago Matos Gomez, in comments to Lusa.
Matos Gomes had already said he would not re-nominate himself to lead the Volt Portugal at the conference scheduled for this weekend.
Two days later, the Volt Portugal asserted that it was not in a political position “neither left nor right”, dismissing the former president’s criticism.
Volt Europa is a federal and “pan-European” party that emerged internationally as a movement in March 2017, as a reaction to “Brexit”, which was started by a group of students in the United States. Andrea Vinzon is the founder of this movement, and it is already a political party in several European countries, namely in Portugal, Germany, Bulgaria, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Luxembourg, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom and Sweden.
The movement emerged in Portugal on December 28, 2017 and was officially approved as a political party by the Constitutional Court in June 2020.
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