"It was an issue that the President of the Republic had already brought up a few months ago and all the parties have said no. It is a subject that has already been delt with," Costa told journalists in Lille, France.

On Sunday, replying to a question from the public attending a conference, Portuguese Finance Minister and Eurogroup president Mario Centeno said bringing the electoral calendar forward "would be appropriate" from a stability point of view if there was an alignment of the schedule that allowed for predictability in terms of the European semester and the presentation of a budget in Brussels.

On Tuesday, the head of the government explained that "intheoretical and abstract terms and for the Europe of the future, the alignment of the electoral frameworks would obviously be interesting, [but] is not for now," and is unlikely to happen, "very soon."

"Objectively, the fact that we are always conditioned by each other's electoral calendar is a factor that often undermines the decision-making factor, of course it does," said Costa, referring to general, regional, local and national elections and to European elections.

The prime minister was speaking in Lille, northern France, after visiting a company of Portuguese group Simoldes.