On October 1, 2025, Judges Gonçalo Manoel de Vilhena de Almeida Ribeiro and José António Pires Teles Pereira submitted their resignations from the Constitutional Court, as stated on the TC’s website.
Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro’s resignation was announced on September 24, with João Carlos Loureiro elected by the TC plenary today as vice-president to replace him.
José Teles Pereira, who has been a judge since 1984 and an appellate judge since 2005, was elected to the Constitutional Court by the Assembly of the Republic in July 2015, proposed by the PSD, and completed his nine-year term over a year ago.
Similarly, Gonçalo de Almeida Ribeiro, elected by parliament in July 2016 and also proposed by the PSD, had exceeded his nine-year term. Judge Joana Fernandes Costa, elected at the same time by the Assembly of the Republic on the proposal of the PS, also remains in her position pending replacement.
According to the law, Constitutional Court judges are appointed for a nine-year term, starting from their inauguration date, but only leave office once their successor is sworn in.
No attempts to elect three new judges to the TC have been made in the current legislature. An election date was initially set for September 26 but was later canceled.
With the new parliamentary composition from the snap elections on May 18, a two-thirds majority (154 deputies out of 230) is no longer viable with PSD and PS alone or the AD (PSD/CDS-PP) and PS, and the AD cannot form this majority solely with Chega, the second-largest parliamentary group, requiring an agreement involving at least three political forces.
Following the resignations of Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro and José Teles Pereira, the TC, led by José João Abrantes since April 2023, operates now with only 11 judges instead of 13 until new members are elected by parliament.
In two prior statements, the TC reported that “on September 30, 2025, Judge Gonçalo Manoel de Vilhena de Almeida Ribeiro resigned as vice-president of the TC” and that “on October 1, the TC plenary elected Judge João Carlos Simões Gonçalves Loureiro as vice-president”.
João Carlos Loureiro, a law professor at the University of Coimbra with a doctorate in Legal-Political Sciences, was co-opted into the TC in April 2023.
Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro had previously announced he would be stepping down from the TC after serving beyond his term duration.
On September 29, SL Benfica presidential candidate João Noronha Lopes announced that if he wins the election, “Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro will be the next president of the General Assembly” of the club.
Vice-president of the TC since April 2023, Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro was proposed by the PSD/CDS-PP government in 2024 as a candidate for the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), but his candidacy was rejected for not meeting the “20 years of experience” requirement, after which he remained with the TC until now.
The Constitution stipulates that the TC comprises 13 judges, with ten appointed by the Assembly of the Republic via a two-thirds majority, and the remaining three co-opted by these judges.
Of the 13, six must be selected from judges of other courts, and the rest among jurists.
