José Manuel Barroso

Biography

José Manuel Durão Barroso was born in Lisbon in 1956. He studied law at the University of Lisbon and political science at the University of Geneva, and later did doctoral research at Georgetown University. As a student around the 1974 revolution he was a leader of the Maoist MRPP, but in 1980 he joined the centre-right Social Democratic Party, alongside an academic career at the Lisbon law faculty.

He entered Aníbal Cavaco Silva's government in 1985 and as secretary of state for foreign affairs from 1987 drove the talks that produced the 1991 Bicesse Accords on Angola. He was foreign minister from 1992 to 1995. Elected PSD leader in 1999, he led the opposition and became prime minister after the 2002 election, pursuing spending cuts to meet EU deficit rules.

Barroso backed the US-led invasion of Iraq, signing the 'letter of the eight' and hosting the March 2003 Azores summit with George W. Bush, Tony Blair and José María Aznar. In 2004 he left office to become President of the European Commission, a post he held for two terms until 2014, covering the Lisbon Treaty and the eurozone crisis.

After leaving Brussels he taught at Princeton and the Catholic University of Portugal. His 2016 appointment as non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International prompted an EU ethics inquiry. He later chaired the board of the vaccine alliance Gavi and in 2026 became president of the Luso-American Development Foundation.