Profile of Jose Manuel Barroso
Jose Manuel Barroso is the 11th president of the European Commission. He has led the center-right Social Democratic Party and served as prime minister of Portugal from April 6, 2002 to June 19, 2004, when he resigned to assume the Commission leadership on November 22 of that year. He has also served as his country’s foreign minister. His term of office expires in 2009. Before the Iraq war he was among the European leaders, along with then prime ministers of Britain Tony Blair and Spain Jose-Maria Aznar, who aligned with Washington. Barroso’s visit to Greece this weekend took place at the invitation of the European Cultural Center at Delphi, where he spoke yesterday in the framework of events marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of late Greek statesman Constantine Karamanlis.