José Sócrates
José Sócrates Carvalho Pinto de Sousa , commonly known as José Sócrates, is a Portuguese politician who was the prime minister of Portugal from 12 March 2005 to 21 June 2011. For the second half of 2007, he acted as president-in-office of the Council of the European Union.
Sócrates grew up in the industrial city of Covilhã. He joined the centre-left Socialist Party in 1981 and was elected as a member of parliament in 1987. Sócrates entered the government in 1995, as secretary of state for Environment in the first cabinet of António Guterres. Two years later, he became Minister of Youth and Sports and in 1999 became Minister for Environment. Sócrates prominence rose during the governments of António Guterres to the point that when the prime minister resigned in 2001, he considered appointing Sócrates as his successor.
In opposition, José Sócrates was elected leader of the Socialist Party in 2004 and led the party to its first absolute majority in the 2005 election. By then, Portugal was experiencing an economic crisis, marked by stagnation and a difficult state of public finances. Like the preceding centre-right government, Sócrates implemented a policy of fiscal austerity and structural reforms. Among the most important reforms were the 2007 Social Security reform and the 2009 labour law reform. His government also restructured the provision of public services, closing thousands of elementary schools and dozens of health care facilities and maternity wards in rural areas and small cities. Despite austerity, Sócrates' government intended to boost economic growth through government-sponsored investments, namely in transportation, technology and energy as well as in health and school infrastructure. The government launched several public–private partnerships to finance such projects. Internally, Sócrates was accused of having an authoritarian style and of trying to control media, while internationally he completed the negotiations of Lisbon Treaty and had close ties with leaders such as the prime minister of Spain José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and the president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez. The first Sócrates government was initially able to reduce the budget deficit and controlling public debt, but economic growth lagged.
In 2008–09, with the Great Recession starting to hit Portugal and facing recession and high unemployment, austerity was waned as part of the European economic stimulus plan. Nevertheless, support for Sócrates and the Socialists eroded and the ruling party lost its majority in the 2009 election. The second government of José Sócrates faced a deterioration of the economic and financial state of the country, with skyrocketing deficit and growing debt. Austerity was resumed in 2010 while the country entered a hard financial crisis in the context of the European debt crisis.
On 23 March 2011, Sócrates submitted his resignation to President Aníbal Cavaco Silva after the Parliament rejected a new austerity package, leading to the 2011 snap election. Financial status of the country deteriorated and on 6 April Sócrates caretaker government requested a bail-out program which was conceded. The €78 billion IMF/European Union bailout to Portugal thus started and would last until May 2014. Sócrates lost the snap election held on 5 June 2011 and resigned as Secretary-General of the Socialist Party. For most of his political career, Sócrates was associated with several corruption cases, notably Independente University and Freeport cases.
On 21 November 2014 he was arrested in Lisbon, accused of corruption, tax evasion, and money laundering, becoming the first former Prime Minister in the history of the country to be thus accused. On 24 November Sócrates was remanded in custody on preliminary charges of corruption and tax fraud. He was held in Évora prison until 4 September 2015 when he left the prison for a relative's house in Lisbon, where he remained under house arrest until 16 October 2015. That day, a judge released him from house arrest, allowing him to await the end of the investigation in freedom, although remaining forbidden from leaving the country or contacting other suspects of the case. The police investigation, known as Operation Marquis continued until his indictment in October 2017. In 2018, Sócrates abandoned the Socialist Party.
Biography
Early years
José Sócrates was born in Porto on 6 September 1957, and was registered as a newborn in Vilar de Maçada, Alijó municipality, in northeastern Portugal, since the locality was his family ancestral homeland. However, the young José Sócrates lived throughout his childhood and teen years with his father, a divorced building designer, in the city of Covilhã, Beiras e Serra da Estrela, in central inland Portugal, in the Centro region. His parents are Fernando Pinto de Sousa and wife and remote relative Maria Adelaide de Carvalho Monteiro. He had two younger siblings, António Carvalho Pinto de Sousa, born circa 1962, died in 2011, and Ana Maria Carvalho Pinto de Sousa, died in 1988. He is a descendant of the illegitimate daughter of António José Girão Teixeira Lobo Barbosa, Fidalgo of the Royal Household and Knight of the Order of Christ.Education
José Sócrates studied in Covilhã's basic and secondary schools, until the age of 18. Then, in 1975, he went to Coimbra in order to attend a higher education institution. He earned in 1979 his 4-year bacharelato degree as a civil technical engineer from the Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra. From 1987 to 1993, he took law classes at Universidade Lusíada, a private university in Lisbon, but failed to graduate. In 1994/95, already a well-known politician, he briefly attended the Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa where he completed some academic disciplines in order to get a CESE diploma, but instead, under circumstances which would provoke a controversy in 2007, he earned in 1996 the licenciatura in civil engineering from the Universidade Independente, a private university in Lisbon which was shut down by Portuguese authorities in 2007/2008. He also has an MBA degree awarded in 2005 by ISCTE, a public university institute in Lisbon, that he obtained after had attended successfully the first year of a 2-year master's degree program of ISCTE that he did not complete. After his tenure as prime minister of Portugal ended in 2011, Sócrates and his elder son, moved to Paris where Sócrates attended the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. In 2013, SciencesPo awarded him his master's degree in political science. His 2013 book Confiança do Mundo – Sobre a Tortura Em Democracia was based on his masters thesis there; however, there was some dispute as to its authorship.Political career
José Sócrates was one of the founders of JSD before changing his political affiliation and applying for membership in the PS – Portuguese Socialist Party. He has been a member of the Socialist Party since 1981. José Sócrates served as a technical engineer for the Covilhã City Council, and has been elected a member of the Portuguese Parliament since 1987, representing the Castelo Branco electoral district. While serving as the chairperson of the Castelo Branco Federation of the Socialist Party, he was elected to the Party's National Secretariat in 1991. José Sócrates was ousted by the Board of the Guarda Municipality in 1990 and 1991, after being warned several times because of poor quality of construction projects and lack of monitoring of the construction works. Sócrates was threatened with disciplinary action for wrongdoings in the technical direction of particular works of whose projects he was the author, but despite being ousted from this capacity, he was never penalized. In addition, as a Member of the Parliament, Sócrates was not allowed by law to work as a technical engineer between 1987 and 1991. From 1989 to 1996, he served as a member of the Covilhã Municipal Assembly. He served as spokesperson on environmental affairs for the Socialist Party from 1991 to 1995. In 1995, he entered government as secretary of state for Environment in the first government of António Guterres. Two years later, Sócrates became Minister for Youth and Sports and was one of the organizers of the EURO 2004 cup in Portugal. He became Minister for Environment in Guterres' second government in 1999. Following the elections of 2002, Sócrates became a member of the opposition in the Portuguese Parliament. Meanwhile, he also had a program of political analysis, hosted jointly with Pedro Santana Lopes on RTP. After the resignation of Ferro Rodrigues as party leader in 2004, he won a bid for the post of secretary-general against Manuel Alegre and João Soares, winning the vote of nearly 80% of party members on 24 September 2004. After the victory of his party in the 2005 legislative election, Sócrates was called on 24 February by President Jorge Sampaio to form a new government – the XVII Constitutional Government. After the 2009 legislative election, held on 27 September 2009, José Sócrates was elected for a second term as prime minister of Portugal. He was also a Member of the Portuguese Council of State as the prime minister.Personal life
Family and residence
Sócrates is divorced from Sofia Costa Pinto Fava, an engineer, with whom he has two sons, José Miguel Fava Pinto de Sousa and Eduardo Fava Pinto de Sousa. Sofia is a daughter of José Manuel Carvalho Fava, an architect, and Clotilde Mesquita, engineer and sister of Alexandre Mesquita Carvalho Fava and Mara Mesquita Carvalho Fava.Sócrates lives in Lisbon, although he used to be a registered elector of the municipality of Covilhã, the place where he voted until the law was changed. Since late 2018, he has been living in Ericeira.