José Manuel Barroso

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José Manuel Durão Barroso
11th President of the European Commission
Incumbent
Assumed office  23 November, 2004
Vice President	Margot Wallström Günter Verheugen
Preceded by	Romano Prodi
117th Prime Minister of Portugal (63rd of the Republic) (15th since the Carnation Revolution)
In office 6 April, 2002 – 17 July 2004
President	Jorge Sampaio
Preceded by	António Guterres
Succeeded by	Pedro Santana Lopes
Born	March 23, 1956 (1956-03-23) (age 53) Lisbon, Portugal
Political party	Partido Social Democrata European People's Party
Spouse	Maria Margarida Pinto Ribeiro de Sousa Uva
Children	Luís, Guilherme, Francisco
Residence	Brussels, Belgium
Alma mater	University of Lisbon University of Geneva
Profession	professor, politician
Religion	Catholic[citation needed]
Signature
Website	ec.europa.eu/president

José Manuel Durão Barroso (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ mɐnuˈɛɫ duˈɾɐ̃ũ bɐˈʁozu]; born 23 March 1956) is the 11th President of the European Commission. He served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 6 April 2002 to 17 July 2004. He assumed the position in the Commission 23 November 2004. He used to go by the name of José Manuel Durão Barroso, Durão Barroso or coloquially simply Durão (as durão means "tough guy" in Portuguese), but later after becoming President of the European Commission he preferred the name José Barroso (as he was internationally called after becoming Prime-Minister) and even later José Manuel Barroso.

[edit] Academic career

He holds two nationalities, Portuguese and Brazilian (Portuguese by both jus sanguinis and jus soli and Brazilian by jus sanguinis). He graduated in Law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon and has an MSc in Economic and Social Sciences from the University of Geneva (Institut Européen de l'Université de Genève) in Switzerland. His academic career continued as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon. He did research for a Ph.D at Georgetown University and Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C.. He is a 1998 graduate of the Georgetown Leadership Seminar.^{[citation needed]} Back in Lisbon, Barroso became Director of the Department for International Relations at Lusíada University (Universidade Lusíada). He also received an honorary degree from Liverpool University on the 3 July 2008 and from Chemnitz University of Technology on the 8th May 2009.^[1]

[edit] Early political career

Barroso's political activity began in his college days, before the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974. He was one of the leaders of the underground Maoist MRPP (Reorganising Movement of the Proletariat Party, later PCTP/MRPP-Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers/Revolutionary Movement of the Portuguese Proletariat). In an interview with the newspaper Expresso, he said that he had joined MRPP to fight the only other student body movement, also underground, which was controlled by the Communist Party. In December 1980, Barroso joined the right-of-centre PPD (Democratic Popular Party, later PPD/PSD-Social Democratic Party), where he remains to the present day.

In 1985, under the PSD government of Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva (now President of Portugal), Barroso was named Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs. In 1987 he became a member of the same government as he was elevated to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (answering to the Minister of Foreign Affairs), a post he was to hold for the next five years. In this capacity he was the driving force behind the Bicesse Accords of 1990, which led to a temporary armistice in Angola's civil war between the ruling MPLA and the opposition UNITA guerrillas of Jonas Savimbi. He also supported independence for East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, then a province of Indonesia by force. In 1992, Barroso was promoted to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs, and served in this capacity until the defeat of the PSD in the 1995 general election.

[edit] Prime Minister of Portugal

In opposition, Barroso was elected to the Assembly of the Republic in 1995 as a representative for Lisbon. There, he became chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1999 he was elected president of his political party, PSD, succeeding Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (a professor of law), and thus became Leader of the Opposition. Parliamentary elections in 2002 gave the PSD enough seats to form a coalition government with the right-wing Portuguese People's Party, and Barroso subsequently became Prime Minister of Portugal on 6 April 2002. As Prime Minister, facing a growing budget deficit, he made a number of difficult decisions and adopted strict reforms. He reduced public expenditure, which made him unpopular among leftists and public servants.^{[citation needed]} On 5 July 2004, having become President-designate of the European Commission, Barroso arranged with Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio the terms of the cessation of his job as Prime Minister of Portugal.

In 2003, Barroso hosted U.S President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar in the Portuguese Island of Terceira, in the Azores, in which the four leaders met and finalised the controversial US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Under Barroso's leadership, Portugal became part of the coalition of the willing for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] President of the European Commission

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In June 2004, following his being proposed as a consensus candidate by the European People's Party, the European Council appointed José Manuel Barroso President-designate of the European Commission. 22 July, the European Parliament endorsed him in the position by 413 votes to 251, with 44 blank ballots and three spoiled ones.^{[citation needed]} He was due to take over officially from Romano Prodi on 1 November. This process was however delayed until 23 November due to problems regarding parliamentary approval of the Barroso Commission.^{[citation needed]}

On 17 June 2009, EU leaders unanimously backed him for a second term as EC President, which the European Parliament was set to debate in July,^[2] but with strong opposition to his reappointment among socialist and Green MEPs ^[3].

During his presidency, the following important issues have been on the Commission's agenda:

• Turkey applying for EU membership
• The reform of the institutions (Treaty of Lisbon)
• The Bolkestein directive, aimed at creating a single market for services within the EU.
• Lisbon Strategy
• Galileo positioning system
• Doha Development Agenda negotiations
• European Institute of Innovation and Technology
• EU Climate Change Package

[edit] Controversies during EC Presidency

In 2005 the German newspaper Die Welt reported that Barroso had spent a week on the yacht of the Greek shipping billionaire Spiro Latsis. It emerged soon afterwards that this had occurred only a month before the Commission approved 10 million euro of Greek state aid for Latsis' shipping company - though the state aid decision had been taken by the previous European Commission before Barroso took up his post. ^[4]. In response to this revelation, Nigel Farage MEP, of the UK Independence Party persuaded around 75 MEPs from across the political spectrum to back a motion of no confidence in Barroso, so as to compel him to appear before the European Parliament to be questioned on the matter.^[5] The motion was tabled on 12 May 2005, and Barroso appeared before Parliament as required at a debate on 26 May 2005.^[6] The motion itself was heavily defeated.

In response to criticism for his choice of a gas-guzzling VW Touareg, amid EU legislation of targets drastically to reduce car CO2 emissions, Barroso dismissed this as "overzealous moralism".^[7]

In April 2008, amid sharp food price rises and mounting food vs fuel concerns, Barroso insisted that biofuel use was "not significant" in pushing up food prices^[8]. The following month, he announced a study that would look into the issue^[9].

[edit] Personal life

Son of Luís António Saraiva Barroso (b. Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Ana, 22 June 1922), of some minor rural nobility descent, and wife (married at the church of Peso da Régua, 4 February 1952) Maria Elisabete de Freitas Durão (b. Vila Real, Folhadela, 19 December 1922), José Manuel Barroso married in Lisbon, at the Lisbon Cathedral, on 28 September 1980 to Maria Margarida Pinto Ribeiro de Sousa Uva (b. Lisbon, Santa Maria de Belém, 25 November 1955), daughter of Luís Fernando Bravo de Sousa Uva (b. Faro, Sé, ca. 1926) and wife Maria Susana Teixeira de Azevedo Pinto Ribeiro (b. Lisbon, Anjos, ca. 1929), with whom he has three sons: Luís (currently studying for a PhD in Law at the London School of Economics), Guilherme and Francisco de Sousa Uva Durão Barroso.

Apart from his mother tongue, Portuguese, Barroso is very fluent in French^[10], and also speaks Spanish and English and has taken a course to acquire a basic knowledge of German.^[11]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: José Manuel Durão Barroso

• European Commission - President José Manuel Barroso
• tellBarroso.eu - a web service for telling Barroso: "What can Europe do for you?"