Elisa Ferreira: the first woman to become Portugal’s EU Commissioner

“Elisa Ferreira has exceptional and unique qualifications. No matter the policy area she will be assigned to, she will certainly be an example of the excellence of Portugal. Her qualifications in the financial and economic areas are obvious.”, Mário Centeno, the Portuguese Minister of Finance and President of the Eurogroup, reacted with this statement to the nomination of Elisa Ferreira to become the first Portuguese woman acting as an EU Commissioner.

The current vice-governor of the Bank of Portugal (the Portuguese Central Bank) was nominated by the Prime-Minister António Costa to take part of the soon-to-be Commission led by the German Ursula Von der Leyen. Elisa Ferreira counts various notorious positions in her CV both in Portugal and abroad. Professor, Minister, Member of the European Parliament and Vice-governor of the Bank of Portugal are among them.

But the corridors of the European Commission as well of the European Parliament are not unknown to Ferreira, who was born in Porto 63 years ago. The current vice-governor of the Bank of Portugal spent 12 years in Brussels, serving as a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 and 2016. During that same period of time, Elisa has integrated ECON (Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee) of the European parliament, where she was the Portuguese hand responsible for the making of EU’s single supervisory mechanism for the banking system, dubbed “Banking Union”.

Considering the prestigious curriculum of Elisa Ferreira in the sector, the PM António Costa has asked for her the policy area of Economic and Financial Affairs, which is currently held by the French Pierre Moscovici. However, it is not a certain thing as one has to consider that Portugal was successful once in getting Centeno elected as President of the Eurogroup before. Taking into account the course of EU’s History, it is unlikely for one single country to accumulate such important responsibilities within the organisation as it could jeopardise the equilibrium of powers.

Recall that Ferreira’s predecessor, Carlos Moedas, was assigned to Science and Innovation .