A handover ceremony will be held today at the headquarters of the European Council in Brussels between the former President of the Council of the EU, Charles Michel and his successor Antonio Costa.

Michel, who is a former Belgian Prime Minister, has been serving as President of the EU Council since December 1, 2019.

Kosta was elected to the new duty in June this year based on the agreement between the three groups from the pro-European centrist majority in the European Parliament - the European People's Party (EPP), the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (SD) and the liberal group "Let's renew Europe" ( RE) for the allocation of leading functions in the EU.

Costa was born in Lisbon in 1961. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Lisbon, and actively entered politics in 1988. In the period from 1991 to 2024, he was a member of the Portuguese Assembly for several terms, and from 2004 to 2005, he was a member of the European Parliament.

In 1997, he was elected as the Portuguese Minister of Relations with the Parliament, and two years later as the Minister of Justice, a position he held until 2002. In 2005, he was elected Minister of Administration, a position he left in 2007, when he became the mayor of Lisbon. He was re-elected as mayor in 2009 and 2013, and in 2014 he became the leader of the then opposition Socialist Party, after which in April of the following year he left the post of mayor, and in November of the same year he was elected Prime Minister of Portugal.

Kosta served as prime minister for almost nine years until April of this year, after his PS was defeated in early parliamentary elections. The election was preceded by an investigation of Costa and his associates on charges of corruption and abuse of office, but he was not charged on the grounds that he was mistakenly implicated after his identity was confused with that of Economy Minister Antonio Costa Silva.

Costa's mandate as president of the European Council will officially begin on Sunday, December 1.

Otherwise, Kosta will be the first holder of one of the highest positions in the EU, who is a member of an ethnic minority. His mother is Portuguese, a journalist by profession and a prominent fighter for the right to abortion, and his father was a writer born in Mozambique. Costa's paternal grandfather was Indian, a native of the former Portuguese colony, now the Indian federal state of Goa, and his grandmother is of French-Mozambican descent.

In his first interview since being elected to his current post, Costa said he wanted to use his ethnic background to redefine Europe's often unequal relations with Asia, Africa and South America.

He also called for a change in the "status quo in today's multipolar world" and for closer relations of the EU with different regions and countries, which are relevant "in a world that is much more than the G7 or the G20". – This is a world made up of 195 countries, said Košta.