MFA in charge while PM Montenegro is on holidays
Paulo Rangel is currently the Government's number two.
The Government announced this week that during PM Luís Montenegro’s holidays on August 12-27, it will be up to the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, Paulo Rangel, to assume the temporary leadership of the Government.
The Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, who, taking into account the structure of the current Government, occupies second place in the hierarchy of the team led by Montenegro, will therefore lead the executive for two weeks.
Profile
Name: Paulo Artur dos Santos Castro de Campos Rangel
Age: 56 years old (born on February 18, 1968)
Birth place: Vila Nova de Gaia
Education: BA in Law at the Portuguese Catholic University
Occupation: Lawyer and teacher at the Portuguese Catholic University and the Porto Business School (fun fact: I took a Political Science class with him)
Political Career: He began political career in the municipal elections of 2001 as a contributor to the electoral program of the then Mayor of Porto, Rui Rio. Between 2004 and 2005, he held the post of Assistant Secretary of State to the Minister of Justice, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco (now President of the National Assembly). In 2005 (the year he joined the PSD), he made his debut as a deputy, elected by Porto, and his rise in the party was rapid. In 2008, following Manuela Ferreira Leite's victory as leader of the PSD, he was chosen to lead the party’s parliamentary group and then as the lead candidate for the party to 2009 European Parliament elections. The PSD emerged victorious in these elections and Rangel became vice-presidency of the parliamentary group of the European People's Party and, in 2015, of the PPE itself. In 2010, Paulo Rangel contested for the leadership of the PSD for the first time and lost to Pedro Passos Coelho. Passos Coelho kept him at the head of the list for the European Parliament in 2014, with the PSD/CDS-PP coalition obtaining 27.7% of the votes against 31.4% for the PS (a result that would end up dictating the departure of socialist leader António José Seguro and the rise of António Costa). In 2019, he headed the PSD’s list to the European Parliament again. In 2021, he ran for the leadership of the PSD again and demanded a more assertive opposition to Prime Minister António Costa's Socialist government but was defeated by incumbent Rui Rio. In 2022, he accepted Luís Montenegro’s invitation to be the PSD’s vice-president and he has served as Minister of State and Foreign Affairs since 2024.
Also known for: In July 2021, amidst his second bid for the PSD’s leadership, a video appeared online showing Rangel seemingly drunk on a street in Brussels. On his Twitter account (now X), the then MEP reacted with the following message: “A video after an excess at a dinner with friends, years ago in Brussels, went viral. I don't know who filmed it, saved it and only now released it. I deplore that you did so, violating the limits of private life. A life, in which, as Sérgio (Godinho) sings, we all have glories, terrors and adventures.” In September 2021, Rangel admitted that he was not heterosexual on a TV interview. The revelation came after the weekly tabloid Tal & Qual outed him, in what was then interpreted as an attempt by his internal political opponents to harm his third candidacy for the leadership of the PSD.