After almost three decades serving the Judiciary Police (PJ), Luís Neves, aged 60, consolidated prestige in his career, he will be the next Minister of Internal Administration (MAI). “The President of the Republic accepted the Prime Minister’s proposal to appoint Dr. Luís Neves as Minister of Internal Administration”, Belém publishes this Saturday on its official page, adding that The inauguration will take place next Monday, February 23rd.
Coming from the heart of criminal investigation, he now assumes political tutelage over all security forces. About Luís Neves, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said it was “one of António Costa’s best choices”when he appointed him to the position in 2018, highlighting, at the PJ’s recent 80th anniversary ceremony, that he has provided “great leadership”. Luís Neves was reappointed in 2021, still during the PS governmentand again at the end of last year, by the previous PSD/CDS-PP Government headed by Luís Montenegro, with the current Minister of Justice, for another three years.
Leaving the PJ strengthened, this police officer, who made combating hate speech and corruption his personal battles, enters the Government at a time when security, associated with radical populism, has become a political weapon. Restoring trust in the sector’s institutions will be one of its biggest challenges, at a time of shortage of personnel in the security forces, also associated with inflexible organizations, of reconfiguring the border security modelextreme weather phenomena and expose the weaknesses in the response capacity of the civil protection system.
Luís António Trindade Nunes das Neves, graduated in Law, started as a lawyer and joined the PJ in 1995. He stood out in the fight against banditry, violent crime and terrorism. In 2009, he assumed leadership of the National Counterterrorism Unit (UNCT), where he directed high-profile operations — from the ETA investigation, to the prosecution of the SIS spy convicted of selling secrets to Russia, from the Tancos case to skinheads, King Ghob, Hell Angels, and human trafficking networks. More recently, he was involved in the major operation against the neo-Nazi group 1143, triggering several threats against him on social media.
Seven years ago, he inherited a weakened PJ: aging staff, lack of investment and internal tensions. When he was appointed, PJ sources interviewed by DN guaranteed that if there was anyone capable of motivating and inspiring the worn-out Judiciary, it was him. “Tireless, determined, relentless and sometimes obsessive about investigations. He doesn’t let anyone give up, even if it seems like there’s no way to prove the crime,” reveals an inspector who worked at UNCT. At the time, the name chosen by António Costa’s government was approved by the PSD and CDS, who praised his professionalism. “An operative who never turns his face and a confident man in his mission to give us confidence”, highlighted Fernando Negrão, at the time president of the social democratic bench, who was also national director of the PJ. Nuno Magalhães, at the time leader of the CDS parliamentary group, had known him since Euro 2004 and considered him “a highly competent person, with an enviable CV”. It was at Euro 2004 that Luís Neves gained a nickname, which still persists in some circles: “the diplomat”. “In meetings with other police forces, he always tries to build bridges, to value each person’s work,” said a GNR officer who belonged to the Internal Security System.
The transformation was profound. Under his leadership, the Judiciary more than doubled the number of inspectors, reinforced its experts, digitized cases and increased its international presence. The PJ became a powerful interlocutor in European forums and led conferences such as the Metadata Law Enforcement Conference (on metadata), which resulted in the Lisbon Declaration signed by around three dozen European police chiefs.
A powerful achievement was to have managed, at the end of 2023, to increase the PJ’s mission supplement to around 1000 euros for the criminal investigation career, which also resulted in a wave of protests from the remaining police forces and also some updating of their supplements – a matter that continues to be negotiated with the unions and in which Luís Neves will certainly have a say.
But one characteristic that most marked Luís Neves’ style was his directness. In a speech at the Diário de Notícias Conference in 2025 that went viral, he did not hesitate to counter the escalation of anti-immigration speech that was fueling hate. He attributed the perception of insecurity claimed by some political leaders to “misinformation” and explained that it was necessary to “make a distinction between foreign criminals who use Portugal for their activities” and immigrants.
These statements later took him to parliament, at the request of the Liberal Initiative where, before the deputies of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees, he reinforced his ideas. “Combating hate speech is everyone’s mission. (…) We have a lot of fake news, a lot of misinformation, a lot of racism, which are the basis of hate crimes”, he emphasized.
When asked by DN, in the exclusive interview that marked the 80th anniversary of the PJ, last October, about why he had decided to intervene in the public space in that way, he explained: “I do not give up on my citizenship rights, nor to say what I think, in the spheres and themes that I consider relevant. (…) I felt that there was too extreme a focus on certain speeches. On social media today there is tremendous verbal violence, violence against all forms of human diversity: gender, race, religion, political opinion.
We see looming toxic masculinities that persecute women just because they are women; racial, religious, ideological attacks. This is growing and spilling over into daily, individual and collective violence. And this violence leads to the commission of serious crimes, with more violence in action, with more knives sometimes being used by very young members of the community. Now, as national director, and having sustained information, I had an obligation to share this analysis”.
In fact, in his first speech as national director, he made no secret of what his concerns were. That year, the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 40th anniversary of Portugal’s Accession to the European Convention on Human Rights were celebrated and the PJ invited, for the first time to an event of this nature, religious communities (Catholic, Islamic, Jewish and Ismaili), associations (SOS Racismo, ILGA, Mulheres contra a Violência, APAV) and organizations (Observatory for Trafficking in Human Beings).
Luís Neves began to mark his lead. “We do not agree with intolerance and we are and will be firm in the face of hate crimes, facing all forms of extremism of a criminal nature based on prejudices or ideological and confessional reasons”, he assured.
Throughout his career, Neves has proven to be a leader who is “on the side of the solution”, as he himself pointed out in public interventions. He managed to resolve complex challenges – for example, he integrated the inspectors from the extinct SEF into the PJ staff, avoiding an impasse and “saving” the then MAI José Luís Carneiro from a difficult problem to manage.
He was also part of the solution, together with the former secretary general of the Internal Security System (SSI), ambassador Paulo Vizeu Pinheiro, when he reached an agreement for the Europol and Interpol Offices, which were part of the PJ, to be integrated into the Single Point of Contact for International Police Cooperation in the SSI.
At the recent inauguration of PJ directors, on February 5, he gave a speech about leadership, responsibility and moral courage. “Never be afraid to move forward. Failure is guaranteed [se não avançarmos]. If we don’t dare to do it, we will certainly not be able to achieve our goals”, he stated. And he insisted: “Never be afraid of failing. If we don’t dare to do it, we fail at birth. If we don’t dare to write, we die at birth. If we don’t dare to do things outside the box, we die at birth.”
He is not afraid to take risks in the name of the values he believes in and sometimes risks being misunderstood, as when he defended Fernando Gomes in front of the cameras, at the inauguration ceremony at the Portuguese Olympic Committee.
With a strong and demanding personality, autonomous, he may face some initial resistance in political management. However, as was already written in an editorial in this newspaper, before Luís Neves’ name was known, “Luís Montenegro may have a unique opportunity to change the paradigm: to think about the national security system in 10 years, not just until the next electoral cycle. This is a mission of pure public service, which requires moral courage, technical competence and calm authority. With better organized police and truly effective Civil Protection, who knows, at the end of history, the arguments for the growth of populism will be disarm in the face of citizens’ trust. Not through ideological appeals, but through concrete responses. If there is anyone with the capacity to do this, it is Luís Neves.
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