information on José Manuel Barroso

Some background information on José Manuel Barroso and the 2005 ‘Snap’ Election.

“In 1999 José Manuel Barroso was elected president of his political party, PSD, Parliamentary elections in 2002 gave the PSD enough seats to form a coalition government with the right-wing Portuguese People's Party (led by onetime ‘O Independente’ editor and Defence Minister, Paulo Portas) and Barroso subsequently became Prime Minister of Portugal on 6 April 2002.

In 2004 Barroso left Santana Lopes, his second-in-command in the PSD to form a coalition government with the People's Party. Within months however, Lopes's charismatic and appealing yet deeply inexperienced leadership began to prove unpopular with his own party and party rivals. Concern was that the right-wing Popular Party (and junior coalition party) could gain even greater influence. The junior party's euroscepticism and tougher, more conservative policies on immigration and the EU proved something of an embarrassment to recently election EU president. It was, however, an approach that was to be catastrophic for the PSD and the People's Party. The recently elected president of the EU Commission deemed the increasing Eurosceptical approach of the PSD and the PP as potentially damaging and embarrassing. In December 2004, former Prime-Minister and recently elected EU President, Barroso used his constitutional powers and dismissed Lopes' coalition government after Lopes failed to uphold changes, supportive of the EU, on issues of defence and foreign affairs.

Incidentally, former Portuguese Prime Minister and EU President, Barroso played host to U.S President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar in the Portuguese Island of Terceira, in the Azores, in which the four leaders met and finalised the controversial U.S-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Secrecy and suspicion shroud the 2009 elections for the next president of the European commission and the distribution of power between the European parties. It seems as though Hans Gert Pöttering wants to accelerate the process to enforce the Portuguese conservative’s re-election