European Affairs will return to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and will be taken over by Inês Domingos, former economic advisor to the Presidency, while former Civil House advisor Nuno Sampaio will be in charge of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, according to official information.
According to a note published on the website of the Presidency of the Republic, the ministry led by Minister of State Paulo Rangel will have three portfolios in the government led by Luís Montenegro: European Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and Portuguese Communities. Internationalization will no longer be included, as it has been until now.
European Affairs has thus returned to the Palácio das Necessidades, after having been under the Prime Minister’s Office in António Costa’s last government, since March 2022, one of the main changes in the executive’s organization.
Inês Lopes, a member of parliament between 2015 and 2019 and elected in third place on March 10 by the Democratic Alliance (AD) in the Aveiro constituency, was economic advisor to the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, between 2021 and 2024.
In Parliament, he sat on the Finance and European Affairs committees.
According to her LinkedIn page, she has been a researcher at the Portuguese Catholic University in Lisbon since 2009 and founded the International Affairs Network, an international relations think tank based in Lisbon.
A PhD candidate at the Institute of Political Studies of the Portuguese Catholic University, she has also worked as an economist at the City of London.
Nuno Sampaio, who will occupy the Foreign Affairs and Cooperation portfolio, was an advisor to the President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s Civil House and Political Affairs advisor since 2016.
Before that, he was the advisor for Parliamentary Affairs and Local Authorities of the Civil House in the Presidency of Aníbal Cavaco Silva, between 2006 and 2016.
The new Secretary of State is a university lecturer and researcher with a doctorate and a master’s degree in Political Science and International Relations.
A familiar face from the diaspora returns as Secretary of State for the Portuguese Communities: José Cesário, elected by AD in the Outer Europe constituency, who has already held this post in three governments.
According to the list of Secretaries of State released today, the Internationalization portfolio does not appear among the Secretaries of State under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as was the case until now, or under the Ministry of Economy.
The swearing-in of the Secretaries of State is scheduled for Friday at 6pm at the Ajuda National Palace in Lisbon.
