Jose Manuel Barroso is a Portuguese right-wing politician who was the 11th President of the European Commission, serving from 2004 to 2014. He served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 6 April 2002 to 17 July 2004. Durão Barroso (as he is known in Portugal) 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 PhD at Georgetown University and Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. Barroso is now a policy fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University and the Frederick H. Schultz Class of 1951 Visiting Professor of International Economic Policy at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs Woodrow Wilson School, where he teaches with Wolfgang F. Danspeckgruber on the EU in International Affairs. In 2004, the proposed European Constitution and now the Treaty of Lisbon included a provision that the choice of President must take into account the result of Parliamentary elections and the candidate supported by the victorious Europarty in particular. That provision was not in force in the nomination in 2004, but the centre right European People’s Party (EPP), who won the elections, pressured for a candidate from its own ranks.

All Sessions by Jose Manuel Barroso