António Barreto

António Barreto   (politician, sociologist)
Born	30 October 1942
Nationality	Portuguese
Alma mater	University of Geneva
Party	Portuguese Communist Party, Socialist Party (Portugal), Democratic Alliance (Portugal)
Portuguese sociologist and politician who attended Bilderberg/1992.  Portugal/Minister of Agriculture and Fishing In office 1976 - 1978  Portugal/Minister of Commerce and Tourism In office 1976 - 1977

António Miguel de Morais Barreto is a Portuguese social scientist, politician and newspaper commentator. He attended the 1992 Bilderberg meeting.

Education

Although born in Porto, he moved as a child to Vila Real, where he lived until he finished his high school studies.

Admitted to the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra, he remained in this city until 1963.

In the early 1960s, he left his law studies and left for Switzerland, where he settled in 1963. In this country, he graduated in Social Economics from the University of Geneva in 1968.

Career

After graduating, he was an assistant at the same university until 1970, when he began to dedicate himself exclusively to research, integrating the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. He was a member of this institute from 1969 to 1974.

In 1985 he returned to the University of Geneva to pursue a doctorate in sociology. His thesis is entitled L'état et la société civile au Portugal: révolution et réforme agraire en Alentejo 1974-1976.

Returning to Portugal during the revolution of April 25, 1974, he became a researcher at the Rural Studies Office of the Portuguese Catholic University, a position he held until 1982. That year, he joined the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, where he remained until his retirement in 2009.

Concurrently, he was a professor of sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities and at the Faculty of Law of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, having been part of the installation committee of the latter.

He was a member of the Board of Directors of the National Statistics Institute.

In 2009, by appointment of Alexandre Soares dos Santos, he assumed the presidency of the Board of Directors of the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation. He remained in that position until 2014.

Politics

He was an activist of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) between 1963 and 1970, joining, after April 25, 1974, more precisely in December of that year, the Socialist Party.

Elected deputy to the Constituent Assembly, the following year, in 1975, he became a member of the VI Provisional Government (Pinheiro de Azevedo), as Secretary of State for Foreign Trade, and of the I Constitutional Government (Mário Soares), as Minister of Commerce and Tourism, first, and Agriculture and Fisheries, later.

As a result of his government stint as Minister of Agriculture, his name would be associated with the legislative amendment prepared in his cabinet — the "Barreto law". This amendment was intended to narrow the path of Agrarian Reform, seeking to counteract the model of expropriation of landed estates that had been followed by the extreme left and the PCP, since April 25.

He moved away from the PS to support the [[Democratic Alliance (Portugal}|Democratic Alliance]] project, led by Francisco Sá Carneiro, with the short-lived reformers movement, created with José Medeiros Ferreira and Francisco Sousa Tavares, in 1978.

In 1985, he supported Mário Soares for the Portuguese presidential elections of 1986.

In the legislature from 1987 to 1991, he was again a deputy to the Assembly of the Republic, for the PS, a party from which he permanently departed in the 1990s.

Works

He is author of a vast number of books and studies. He dedicated his research to the themes of emigration, socialism and Agrarian Reform, evolution of Portuguese society, social indicators, Justice, regionalization, State and Public Administration, welfare state, and political behaviors.

On television, he signed the documentary series Portugal, um retrato social, directed by Joana Pontes (RTP, 2006), and did political commentary on TV.

He was a columnist for the newspaper Público from 1991, and writes a weekly Sunday column for Diário de Notícias.

In 2020, he advocates for the right to "hate speec" on the Internet.

Awards

On 8 June 2012, he was awarded by President Aníbal Cavaco Silva with the Grand Cross of the Military Order of our Lord Jesus Christ. On 5 October 2017, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of freedom by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

He received the Montaigne Prize, awarded by The Alfred Toepfer Foundation and the University of Tübingen, in 2004.

He was elected a member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences in 2008.

Family

He is the third of seven children of Manuel Da Costa Pinto Barreto and his wife Maria do Céu de Morais Taborda, maternal granddaughter of 1.Baron de Gouvinhas and maternal great-niece of the 1.º Viscount of Morais, who refused the title of Count of Morais, a noble family, Catholic and supporter of the monarchy.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1992	21 May 1992	24 May 1992	France Royal Club Evian Evian-les-Bains	The 40th Bilderberg. It had 121 participants.

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