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The leading lights of the Portuguese government.
José Socrates, prime minister
- At the age of 50, José Socrates is just a year younger than his political rival, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, with whom he has a "stiffly formal" relationship. Despite having known each other for decades, the two men still use Portuguese’s polite ‘you’ form to address each other. Socrates has a reputation for being short-tempered if confronted with criticism or opposing views. He is regarded as a pragmatist and enjoys a good reputation in Portugal. As sports minister, he played a major role in winning Portugal’s bid to host the Euro 2004 soccer championship and made a mark as environment minister in the government of António Guterres in 1999. He had to clear up confusion about his academic qualifications which temporarily blighted his reputation. He lacks experience of international affairs.
Luís Amado, foreign affairs minister
- Luís Amado’s background ought to give him a good understanding of transatlantic relations, which will help him chair meetings of EU foreign ministers. He is a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He has lived most of his life in Madeira, a group of islands perched out in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa and he became the islands’ representative in the Portuguese national parliament. He has lengthy experience in the ministry of foreign affairs having been secretary of state in 1999-2002. His first job in the Socialist government of Prime Minister José Socrates was as defence minister. Speaking in May, Amado said that he wanted the EU to focus on its southern borders, to learn lessons from how it had responded to changes in eastern Europe - German reunification, enlargement and relations with Russia - and apply them to such challenges as migration, Islamic terrorism and underdevelopment in Africa.
Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, finance minister
- Fernando Teixeira dos Santos is seen as something of a control freak in his home country. When he took office in 2005, the economy was in dire need of some fiscal discipline but the country’s budget deficit has been driven down from an all-time high of 6% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2005 to 3.9% in 2006.
Teixeira dos Santos took over after his predecessor Luis Campos e Cunha left the job after only four months. Dos Santos, who had already been secretary of state for treasury and finance in 1995-99, was itching to re-enter office after six years of presiding over Portugal’s stock exchange authority.
Known for his mistrust of the Brussels machine, particularly of the Commission’s statistics office, Eurostat, Texeira dos Santos is nonetheless expected to drive forward the debate on tax fraud and public finances during his chairmanship of meetings of finance ministers.
Deeply conservative at heart, Teixeira dos Santos will not welcome Commission ambitions to introduce a common corporation tax base. Portugal, with its small domestic market and small GDP, intends to build its economy from a low tax base.
Rui Carlos Pereira, interior minister
- Baptisms of fire do not come any stronger than that currently facing Rui Carlos Pereira, the Portuguese minister for the interior, who took up his portfolio just last month and will from 1 July oversee some of the more ambitious elements of the Portuguese presidency. His predecessor, António Costa, a former vice-president of the European Parliament, resigned to be a candidate for mayor of Lisbon.
Pereira has never held a senior cabinet post before and comes fresh from a short stint as a judge at Portugal’s constitutional court. Before that the 51-year-old spent most of his career in universities or working as a lawyer and drafting measures on penal reform. He was secretary of state at the ministry of interior in 2000-02 and was an adviser to cabinet in 1990-94. He knows the technical side of the job well but his lack of media experience and being unknown to other EU ministers could put him at a disadvantage in pushing proposals through the Council of Ministers.
Álvaro Mendonça e Moura, EU ambassador
- While the team of ministers for the Portuguese presidency is seen as relatively lightweight and lacking in international experience - with the exception of Foreign Minister Luís Amado - EU officials are confident that Álvaro Mendonça e Moura, Portugal’s permanent representative to the EU, will prove a safe pair of hands and run the presidency efficiently and competently.
A law graduate, Mendonça e Moura has a long record of service in international organisations and has dealt with a bewildering range of different policy areas. He has long experience with various United Nations organisations including the UN Commission on crime prevention and criminal justice, and the high level group on international drug control. He was vice-chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission and chairman of the general assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Mendonça e Moura has been Portugal’s permanent representative since October 2002.
The leading lights of the Portuguese government.
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