“The competence in this matter belongs to the Government. It was the Government that decided. Today, the Prime Minister informed me in the morning of the proposal he would present to the Government and then to the Portuguese people. From the moment it is presented, [Maria Luís Albuquerque] is Portugal’s candidate,” said the Head of State.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa added that in this Government’s choice, he was “only informed and not consulted.”
The President of the Republic also said that he does not comment on the positions of political parties, justifying that, “as in everything in life, there are those who agree and those who disagree,” but he does not have to express an opinion.
The Head of State was speaking to journalists in Miranda do Douro, in the district of Bragança, on the sidelines of “Summer CEmp,” the summer school of the European Commission Representation in Portugal, which is taking place in this Transmontana city until Saturday.
Maria Luís Albuquerque, 56, was Minister of State and Finance during the period when Portugal was under financial assistance from the ‘troika’, succeeding Vítor Gaspar in July 2013 and remaining until the end of the executive led by Pedro Passos Coelho.
In the PSD, she was vice-president during Passos Coelho’s leadership and headed the list of PSD candidates for deputies in Setúbal in 2011 and 2015.
Currently, she is a member of the PSD National Council – second name on Luís Montenegro’s leadership list, right after Carlos Moedas – and a member of the Supervisory Board of the European subsidiary of the North American company Morgan Stanley.
