Sole People-Animals-Nature member in European Parliament leaves party

  • Lusa
  • 16 June 2020

Francisco Guerreiro announced that he was leaving PAN because of "political differences" with the party leadership.

People-Animals-Nature (PAN), a Portuguese political party, has lost its representation in the European Parliament after its only member in the assembly, Francisco Guerreiro, cut his links with the party to become an independent member of the Greens/European Free Alliance group.

Guerreiro, 35, who headed the party’s list for the Lisbon constituency in the 2019 elections and was its only candidate elected nationwide, announced in a message to Lusa on Tuesday said he was leaving it because of “political differences” with the leadership. He said these included the removal of its founding principles and a “growing and clear shift leftward.”

PAN secured 5.08% of the vote nationwide in the 2019 European elections. It had since 2015 had one member of Portugal’s parliament, André Silva, the party’s national spokesman, having secured 1.39% of the national vote, and in October 2019 increased its representation there to a parliamentary group of four members, after securing 3.3% of the national vote.

In the European Parliament, Guerreiro is first vice-chair of the assembly’s Agriculture and Rural Development Committee, as well as being a member of the Fisheries and Budgets Committees, vice-chair of the Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals, as well as taking part in the Food and Agricultural Organization alliance against hunger and malnutrition in the European Parliament.

“He has been outstanding for his active participation both in plenary in Brussels and Strasbourg and as rapporteur and shadow rapporteur on important reports such as the European Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Fund (FEAMP),” the note sent to Lusa stressed.

Guerreiro was born in Santiago do Cacém, in the Alentejo region, on 12 September 1984. He graduated in Media Studies at Coimbra’s Instituto Superior de Educação and worked as a market research analyst and project leader for the European Commission until 2014.