Josep Borrell
Josep Borrell Fontelles is a Spanish politician who served as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission from 2019 to 2024. A member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, he served as President of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2007 and as Spain's Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation from 2018 to 2019.
Born and raised in the Catalan village of La Pobla de Segur, Borrell is an aeronautical engineer and economist by training as well as a professor of mathematics. He entered politics in the 1970s as a member of the PSOE during Spain's transition to democracy, and went on to serve in several positions during the governments of Felipe González, first within the Ministry of Economy and Finance as General Secretary for the Budget and Public Spending and Secretary of State for Finance, then joining the Council of Ministers as Minister of Public Works and Transport. In the opposition after the 1996 election, Borrell unexpectedly won the PSOE primary in 1998 and became Leader of the Opposition and the designated prime ministerial candidate of the party until he resigned in 1999. He then switched to European politics, becoming a Member of the European Parliament during the 2004–2009 legislative period and serving as President of the European Parliament for the first half of the term.
He returned to the Council of Ministers in June 2018, when he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation in the Sánchez government. In July 2019, Borrell was announced as the European Council's nominee to be appointed High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. He took office in December 2019.
Early life and career
Josep Borrell Fontelles was born on 24 April 1947 in the Catalan village of La Pobla de Segur, province of Lleida, near the Pyrenees, son of Joan Borrell and Luisa Fontelles Doll. He grew up in the village, where his father owned a small bakery. His paternal grandparents were Spanish immigrants in Argentina, where they ran a bakery in the city of Mendoza, close to the General San Martín Park. They returned to Spain when Joan Borrell, Josep's father, was eight years old. Borrell's father arrived in Spain just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and afterwards he would never leave his village of La Pobla de Segur.After completing primary education, the remote location of his village led Josep Borrell to be home-schooled with aid from his mother and a retired teacher, taking the official Baccalaureate exams at the Lleida high school. He continued his higher education thanks to several scholarships, including from the Juan March Foundation and the Fulbright Program. In 1964 he moved to Barcelona to study industrial engineering, but left after a year in 1965 to study aeronautical engineering at the Technical University of Madrid, graduating in 1969. In the summer of 1969 Borrell worked as volunteer at the Gal On kibbutz in Israel, where he met his future French wife Caroline Mayeur, from whom he is now divorced.
During this time, he also began to study for a bachelor's degree and later a PhD in economics at the Complutense University of Madrid. Borrell also holds a master's degree in applied mathematics from Stanford University in Palo Alto, and a postgraduate in energy economics from the French Institute of Petroleum in Paris. In May 1976 Borrell defended his PhD thesis in economics at the UCM.
From 1972 to 1982 he lectured in mathematics at the Higher Technical School of Aeronautical Engineering of the UPM. In 1982 he was appointed associate professor of Business Mathematics at the University of Valladolid. From 1975 to 1982 he also worked for Cepsa, employed at the company's Department of Systems and Information Engineering; he combined this activity with the teaching of university classes and involvement in local politics.
Political career
Involvement in local politics
Borrell joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in 1975 and started his political activity during Spain's transition to democracy in the Socialist Grouping of Madrid along with Luis Solana and Luis Carlos Croissier. He ran for office as the number 5 in the PSOE list for the 1979 municipal election in Majadahonda, becoming city councillor. Borrell also became a member of the 1979–1983 corporation of the Provincial Deputation of Madrid and managed the Financial Department of the provincial government body in the pre-autonomic period.Role during the González's governments
In the 1982 general election the PSOE won a landslide victory, returning the socialists to power for the first time since the years of the Second Republic. Under Prime Minister Felipe González, Borrell was appointed to several prominent positions within the Ministry of Economy and Finance, first as General Secretary for the Budget and Public Spending, and then as Secretary of State for Finance. During his tenure as Secretary of State for Finance, Spain joined the European Economic Community in 1986. He became known for his actions seeking to combat fraud and tax evasion, going after the rich and famous, including celebrities such as Lola Flores, Marujita Díaz or Pedro Ruiz. In the 1986 general election he was for the first time elected to the Congress of Deputies, remaining as an MP representing Barcelona until 2004.In 1991 he joined the Council of Ministers as Minister of Public Works and Transport.
He took a role in the process of liberalization of telecommunications in Spain, promoting the 1991–2001 National Plan of Telecommunications ; in 1993, Borrell threatened nonetheless the European Commission with blocking the liberalization unless the concession of a moratory Spain was given, as Borrell deemed imperative to achieve first the universalization of service before the complete liberalization.
Following the 1993 general election, Borrell continued with a seat at the Council of Ministers, assuming the portfolio of Minister of Public Works, Transport and Environment in the last government presided by Felipe González. He left the office after the arrival to power of the People's Party in 1996, remaining as an MP for Barcelona in the Spanish Congress.
Brief spell as leader of the opposition
In 1998 Borrell decided to run against the PSOE's then party leader Joaquín Almunia in the first national primary election ever held in the PSOE since the Second Republic, intended to determine who the party would nominate as its prime ministerial candidate vis-à-vis the 2000 general election. Borrell ran as the underdog, campaigning as the candidate of the socialist base against the party establishment, and surprisingly won the voting, commanding 114,254 of the member's votes, versus the 92,860 obtained by Almunia. Thus began an uneasy relationship and power-sharing—the "bicefalia" —between the official party leader, Almunia, and the prime ministerial candidate elected by the members in the primaries, Borrell.However, in May 1999, a fraud investigation was launched into two officials whom, several years earlier, Borrell had appointed to senior posts in the finance ministry. Though not involved in the inquiry into property purchases, Borrell resigned from the role of Prime Ministerial candidate, stating that he did not want the affair to damage his party's chances in the upcoming local and general elections.
Involvement in European politics
Amid the sixth term of the Cortes Generales, Borrell was elected to chair the Joint Congress-Senate Committee for the European Union in October 1999, replacing Pedro Solbes. Reelected as MP for Barcelona in the 2000 general election, Borrell repeated as president of the Joint Committee for the European Union for the full 7th parliamentary term. Then, in 2001, Borrell was also appointed the Spanish parliament's representative on the Convention on the Future of Europe. In 2011 he was awarded Spain's medal of the Order of Constitutional Merit in recognition of his participation in this convention, which drafted the European Constitution that eventually led to the Treaty of Lisbon. During his time at the convention, he unsuccessfully pushed for a mention to a "federal model" in the draft, as well as he advocated for the explicit mention of the equality between women and men. A laicist, he also then opposed the inclusion of the notion of a "Christian heritage" in the text.In 2004, the prime minister and PSOE's leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero proposed Borrell to lead the Socialist Ticket in the 2004 European elections. The PSOE won the elections with 6,6 million votes, obtaining 25 MEP seats, although turnout was relatively low at 46%. Borrell sat with the Party of European Socialists group, and served as leader of the Spanish delegation.
In July 2004 Borrell was elected President of the European Parliament, as a result of an agreement between the EPP and the Socialists, becoming the third Spaniard to hold this position after Enrique Barón and José María Gil-Robles. In the presidential vote, out of 700 Members of the European Parliament he received an absolute majority with 388 votes in the first ballot. The other two candidates were the Polish Liberal Bronisław Geremek and the French communist Francis Wurtz. He was the first newly elected MEP to hold the post since direct elections were held in 1979. As part of a deal with the conservative faction in the parliament, the EPP, he was succeeded as president of the parliament by the German conservative politician Hans-Gert Pöttering in the second part of the five-year term.
In his capacity as president, Borrell also chaired the Parliament's temporary committee on policy challenges and budgetary means of the enlarged Union 2007–2013. From 2007 until leaving the Parliament in 2009, he served as chairman of the Committee on Development. In addition to his committee assignments, he was a member of the Parliament's delegation to the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly.