Augusto Santos Silva


Augusto Ernesto dos Santos Silva is a Portuguese sociologist, university professor, and politician. Since November 2015, he has been the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the XXI and XXII Constitutional Governments led by Prime Minister António Costa.
Santos Silva joined the Socialist Party in 1990, and has served in a number of ministerial roles, namely Minister of Education, Minister of Culture, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, and Minister of National Defence.

Early life and education

Silva was born on 20 August 1956, in the port city of Porto. He graduated from the University of Porto with a degree in history in 1978 and later obtained a doctorate in sociology from ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon in 1992.

Academic career

Silva started his career as an economics professor in Porto beginning in 1981. Eventually, he worked his way up to Chair of the Scientific Council and served as Dean of the University of Porto from 1998 to 1999.
Silva also served on the National Board of Education from 1996 to 1999, the Commission on Social Security from 1996 to 1998 and the Board of Directors of the José Fontana Foundation from 2002 to 2005, which is affiliated with the Socialist Party. He also represented Portugal in the Council of Europe's Education for Democratic Citizenship project from 1997 to 1999.

Political career

Silva started his political activity while at university, serving as a member of the Porto committee of the Workers' Revolutionary Union, a Trotskyist group aligned with the Internationalist Communist League. In the 1976 presidential election, he supported Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, and in the 1980 election, he supported António Ramalho Eanes. Silva also joined the Movement of Socialist Left, aligning himself with politicians such as Alberto Martins, Arnaldo Fleming, and Jorge Ribeiro Strecht. In the 1986 election, he was a supporter of Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo in the first round, followed by Mário Soares in the second.
Five years later, Silva officially joined the Socialist Party. He was first elected to the Assembly of the Republic in the 1995 elections, where he has served continually ever since.
Silva has served in a number of ministerial roles, beginning in 2000 when he was appointed Minister of Education in the government of Prime Minister António Guterres, which he served as until 2001. At that time, he was appointed Minister of Culture, serving for a year in that role.
From 2005 to 2009, Silva was the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and the Minister of Defense from 2009 to 2011, both in the governments of Prime Minister José Sócrates.

Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2015–2019

Since the beginning of 2015, Silva has been serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of Prime Minister António Costa. In domestic and international deal-making, Santos Silva and Costa are widely seen as astute negotiators, having been building close ties with other Southern European governments during their time in office.
In a diplomatic row over Venezuela's jailing of Portuguese supermarket managers on charges of gouging food prices, Silva summoned the Venezuelan ambassador to Lisbon in September 2018 and demanded that the problem be resolved swiftly.

Other activities

Silva is also an author, his two most recent works being Os valores da esquerda democrática: vinte teses oferecidas ao escrutínio público, and A sociologia e o debate público: estudos sobre a relação entre conhecer e agir. Additionally, he has served as a columnist for the Jornal de Notícias, Público, and TVI 24.
Silva has also been documented attending a Bilderberg Group meeting in Ottawa Canada.

Honours