The decision to request a hearing with the head of state, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, was among those taken at the first meeting of the committee to set up the Alliance, which took place on Tuesday. It also formally approved the holding of the first party congress on 9 and 10 February in Évora, as well as the constitution of some party organs.

Along with Lopes, who once led the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the members of the committee who also make up the party’s executive board are Luís Cirilo, a former PSD deputy and secretary-general, Carlos Pinto, a former PSD mayor of Covilhã, Margarida Netto, former member of the right-wing CDS-PP (People’s Party) and Rosario Águas, a former PSD secretary of state.

Águas is to head the party’s Studies Office, while Cirilo was appointed the party’s executive director of the Alliance.

An advisory body, the Strategic Political Council, was also set up, whose first named member is António Martins da Cruz, a career diplomat and former foreign minister, and which also includes several university professors and physicians.

The committee also ratified the pre-enrolment of members, as well as the decision to set up offices in Porto and in the regions of the Azores and Madeira, in addition to the existing one in Lisbon.

Portugal’s Constitutional Court announced on 25 October that it had approved the formation of the new Alliance party, which thus became the country’s 23rd. The decision came just over a month after Lopes had on 19 September submitted more than 12,000 signatures to the court to start the process of setting up the party.

He had announced his intention to leave the PSD after 40 years as a member in early August. On the 20th of that month, a declaration of the new party's principles was made, in which it was said to be based on "three fundamental axes: personalism, liberalism and solidarity".