Mayor · Lisbon City Council
Born in Beja in 1970, he holds a degree in Civil Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico. He also attended the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris. In 1998, he moved to the United States, where he enrolled at Harvard University and obtained a Master of Business Administration.
He began his career as an engineer with the Suez Group in France, worked for several years in the City of London, and later founded his own company in Portugal.
In 2011, he was elected Member of Parliament for the Beja constituency and became Secretary of State to the Prime Minister in the 19th Constitutional Government, with responsibility for coordinating the Adjustment Programme.
In 2014, he became the fifth Portuguese to serve as a European Commissioner, where he managed the world’s largest research and innovation fund, worth €80 billion. He was the architect of the current €100 billion Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
In 2019, he joined the Board of Trustees of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He is also Vice-President of the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris.
In March 2021, he launched his candidacy for Mayor, creating the “New Times” coalition. He was elected Mayor of Lisbon on 26 September 2021 and re-elected for a second term on 12 October 2025.
Since July 2024, he has been a member of the Council of State, elected by the Assembly of the Republic, representing the Social Democratic Party (PSD) for the 16th Legislature (2024–2028).
In November 2025, he was elected President of the Lisbon Metropolitan Council.
In 2014, he became the youngest member of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering. He is also an honorary member of the African Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded several honorary doctorates (University College Cork in Ireland, ESCP Europe – École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris, NOVA University Lisbon, and West University of Timișoara in Romania). In 2019, he received the Gold Medal of the Order of Engineers, and in 2020 he was named “Alumnus of the Year” by the University of Coimbra. In 2023, he was awarded the Pontifical Order of St Sylvester by Pope Francis and the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry by the President of the Republic. In March 2025, he was awarded the Légion d’honneur by French President Emmanuel Macron.