Maria Luis Albuquerque, chosen by the Portuguese government as European Commissioner, was Passos Coelho’s Minister of State and Finance during the Troika period, was critical of Rui Rio’s leadership and is currently a member of the National Council of the PSD.
The second name on Luís Montenegro’s list of leaders in the National Council, just after Carlos Moedas, and since September 2022 a member of the Supervisory Board of the European branch of the North American Morgan Stanley, María Luis Albuquerque, 56, took over as Finance Minister from Vítor Gaspar in July 2013, remaining in that position until the end of Passos Coelho’s government in November 2015.
In the PSD, he was vice-president during the leadership of Passos Coelho and led the list of candidates for the PSD’s parliament in Setúbal in 2011 and 2015. In 2019, during the leadership of Rui Rio, whose strategy he criticized, he was excluded from the list of candidates for the Assembly of the Republic.
In 2022, already under the 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 president of the Lisbon City Council, Carlos Moedas, emphasizing then the possibility of “helping and contributing” to the party’s objectives, but refused to return to the past.
With a degree in Economics from the Lusíada University of Lisbon and a Master’s degree in Monetary and Financial Economics from ISEG (Higher Institute of Economics and Management), Maria Luís Albuquerque joined the government in 2011 at the age of 44 to head the State Secretariat of Treasury and Finance, created by the Institute for Public Debt Management.
It was that same year that her friendship with Passos Coelho, for whom she had been a teacher, led her to agree to lead the PSD list in Setúbal for the legislative elections, which she considered a “baptism of fire” for those just entering active politics.
In a low-key manner, she was involved in the sale of BPN to BIC and the privatization of companies such as EDP and REN. This was before Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho decided in October 2012 to separate the finance and treasury portfolios, leaving the State Secretariat of Finance under Manuel Rodríguez and María Luis Albuquerque, who remained in charge of the treasury portfolio.
The then Secretary of State was closely involved in the negotiations to abolish swap contracts (interest rate derivatives) and was the first person to be heard by the parliamentary committee investigating swap deals.
Blok de Esquerda, through then deputy Ana Drago, referred to María Luis Albuquerque several times with the epithet “exchange lady”, but the name did not stick. This despite the fact that she was responsible for the conclusion of several “exchange” contracts when she was director of financial management of the rail network manager REFER between 2001 and 2007. In her defense, María Luis Albuquerque said that all the “exchange” contracts “carried out by Out by Refer over the past 10 years have actually brought the company a net profit.
Married and a mother of three, Maria Luis Albuquerque was born in 1967 in Braga, a city where she never really lived, she said in a May 2011 interview with the newspaper Rostos.pt. Her father was then a commander in the PNS, and Maria Luis accompanied him on trips that eventually took her, at the age of nine, to Mozambique, where her father went to work on the Cahora Bassa dam and where he stayed from 1976 to 1982.
It was in Mozambique, he says, that he underwent his ideological and personal formation, as he spent his teenage years during a turbulent period for the country: “I always had a fighting spirit because I always refused to accept the rules, to sing the anthem, to bow to the leader. These were situations that struck me because I did not allow them to limit individual freedoms,” he told the same newspaper, in which he also recalled his Catholic origins.
After finishing preparatory school, he would return to Portugal, to his grandparents’ home in Armamar, in the Douro region, the land that he says is most his. This was before his trip to the capital, a journey that he credits with developing in him “a spirit of great openness to change,” a taste for “new things, new ideas.”
It was in Lisbon that he graduated in Economics from the University of Lusíada and obtained a Master’s degree in Monetary and Financial Economics from ISEG.
During her career, which began as a university professor, Maria Luis Albuquerque served as a Senior Technical Officer in the Directorate-General of Treasury and Finance from 1996 to 1999, as a Senior Technical Officer in the Directorate of Studies and Economic Prospects of the Ministry of Economy from 1999 to 2001, and as Advisor to the Secretary of State for Treasury and Finance in 2001 in the government of António Guterres.
She was also Director of the Financial Management Department at Refer between 2001 and 2007 and coordinated the Emissions and Markets Centre at the Institute for Treasury and Public Credit Management between 2007 and 2011.
In a short statement made this Wednesday at the official residence in São Bento, without the right to question, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said he had chosen 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.
“He is a person of recognized academic, professional, political and civic merit,” he said. “He has served, among other things, as a university professor, Secretary of State for the Treasury, Minister of State and Finance, Member of the Assembly of the Republic, as well as various functions 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 nominate their candidates for the post of European Commissioner for the next term.
Elisa Ferreira is the current Commissioner of Portugal, appointed by the PS government in 2019 to the Cohesion and Reform portfolio.
Between September and October, the European Parliament will hold public hearings on the names proposed for new European Commissioners, and the European Assembly will give final approval in plenary session so that the new European Commission can later take office.
If all proposed names receive an immediate green light from the European Parliament, the new College of Commissioners could take office on 1 November, but if rejected, the deadline would jump to 1 December, given the time the country needs to propose a new name and for that candidate to be interviewed by Ursula von der Leyen and heard at a hearing in the European Assembly.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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