Portugal picks new government with $50B of EU funds on table

By BARRY HATTON
Associated Press

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Portugal is holding an early election that looks set to produce another vulnerable minority government. The ballot Sunday comes as the country is poised to start spending a huge windfall of European Union funds. The election of a minority government would leave Portugal back where it started two months ago, when lawmakers rejected the minority Socialist government’s spending bill and the country’s president dissolved parliament. Opinion polls suggested the center-left Socialists and their main rivals, the center-right Social Democratic Party, were in a tight race. Those two parties traditionally collect around 70% of the vote and have for decades alternated in power in western Europe’s poorest country.