Lisbon, Aug. 28, 2024 (Lusa) - Maria Luís Albuquerque, chosen by the Portuguese government as European Commissioner, was former prime minister Passos Coelho's Minister of State and Finance during the ‘troika’ period, criticised the then party leader Rui Rio's leadership and currently sits on the Social Democratic Party's (PSD) National Council.
The second name on current prime minister Luís Montenegro's list for the National Council, after Carlos Moedas (Lisbon mayor), and since September 2022 a member of the Supervisory Board of Morgan Stanley's European subsidiary, 56-year-old Maria Luís Albuquerque succeeded Vítor Gaspar as Minister of Finance in July 2013, and remained in the post until the end of the executive led by Passos Coelho in November 2015.
In the PSD, she was vice-president during Passos Coelho's leadership and head of the list of candidates for PSD MPs in Setúbal in 2011 and 2015. In 2019, under the leadership of Rui Rio, whose strategy she criticised, she was left off the list of parliamentary candidates.
In 2022, under the party leadership of Luís Montenegro, Maria Luís Albuquerque was number two on the list presented by the leadership to the National Council and headed by the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas. At the time, she emphasised the opportunity to ‘help and contribute’ to the party's challenges, but refused to return to the past.
With a degree in Economics from Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa and a Master's in Monetary and Financial Economics from ISEG (Lisbon's Institute of Economics and Management), Maria Luís Albuquerque arrived in the government in 2011, aged 44, to become Secretary of State for the Treasury and Finance, coming from the Institute that manages public debt.
This was the same year that her friendship with Passos Coelho, whose teacher she was, led her to accept the position of PSD candidate in Setúbal in the legislative elections, which she considered a ‘baptism of fire’ for someone who was just starting out in active politics.
With a low profile, she was involved in the sale of bankrupt BPN bank to BIC bank and the privatisations of companies such as electricity company EDP and electricity and gas network manager, REN. This was before, in October 2012, the prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, decided to separate the Finance and Treasury portfolios, with Manuel Rodrigues taking over as Secretary of State for Finance and Maria Luís Albuquerque keeping the Treasury portfolio.
The then secretary of state stood out for negotiating the cancellation of swap contracts (interest rate derivatives) and was the first person to be heard by the parliamentary commission of inquiry into swaps.
The Left Bloc, through its then MP Ana Drago, repeatedly called Maria Luís Albuquerque "swap lady", but the name didn't stick. This is despite the fact that she was responsible for contracting several swap contracts when she was director of the financial management department of the railway network manager Refer, between 2001 and 2007. In her defence, Maria Luís Albuquerque said that all the swap contracts carried out by Refer over the last 10 years actually had a net gain for the company.
Married and the mother of three children, Maria Luís Albuquerque was born in 1967 in Braga, a city where she never really lived, as she said in May 2011 in an interview with the newspaper Rostos.pt. At the time, her father was a GNR (national guard) commander and Maria Luís accompanied him on his journeys, which took her to Mozambique at the age of nine, where her father went to work on the Cahora Bassa Dam, where she stayed from 1976 to 1982.
It was in Mozambique that she says she developed her ideology and personality, as she spent her adolescence in a troubled period in the country: ‘I always had a combative spirit, because I always refused to accept the rules, to sing the anthem, to worship the leader. These were situations that marked me out, because I didn't accept that individual freedoms were being limited,' she told the same newspaper, in which she also recalled her Catholic upbringing.
After finishing school, she returned to Portugal to her grandparents' house in Armamar, in the Douro region, the land she says she feels most at home in. This was before moving to the capital to study, a path to which he attributes the ‘spirit of great openness to change’ and the taste for ‘new things, new ideas’ that she developed.
It was in Lisbon that she graduated in economics from Universidade Lusíada and took a master's degree in Monetary and Financial Economics from ISEG.
In a career that began by teaching at university, Maria Luís Albuquerque was a senior technician in the Directorate-General for the Treasury and Finance between 1996 and 1999, a senior technician in the Office of Studies and Economic Prospects in the ministry of the economy between 1999 and 2001, and served as an advisor to the Secretary of State for the Treasury and Finance in 2001, in António Guterres' Socialist government.
She was also Director of Refer's Financial Management Department between 2001 and 2007 and coordinated the Emissions and Markets Centre of the Treasury and Public Credit Management Institute between 2007 and 2011.
In a short statement made on Wednesday at his official residence in São Bento, without the right to questions, the prime minister, Luís Montenegro, said that he chose Maria Luís Albuquerque with the support of the entire government, in a process that took place with ‘modesty’, and highlighted the profile of the former minister of state and finance.
‘She is a personality of recognised academic, professional, political and civic merit,’ he said. ‘She has worked, among others, as a university lecturer, secretary of state for the Treasury, minister of state and finance, member of parliament, as well as in various roles in the public, private and social sectors,’ he added.
Portugal and the other 26 member states of the European Union (EU) have until Friday to propose their candidates for the post of European Commissioner for the next term.
Elisa Ferreira is the current Portuguese commissioner, appointed by the PS (socialist) government in 2019 to the Cohesion and Reforms portfolio.
Between September and October, public hearings will be held in the European Parliament on the names proposed for the new European Commissioners, and it will be up to the European Assembly to give the final go-ahead in plenary for the new European Commission to take office.
If all the proposed names get an immediate green light from the European Parliament, the new college of commissioners could take office as early as 1 November, but with a rejection the deadline would be 1 December, given the time needed for the country in question to propose a new name and for that candidate to be interviewed by Ursula von der Leyen and heard in the European assembly.
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