Maria João Rodrigues, former Portuguese Minister of Employment in Portugal of PM Antonio Guterres, is a European politician with a large track in different European institutions: EU Presidencies, Council, European Council, European Commission and, more recently, European Parliament where she was Vice-President of S&D Group.
Rodrigues played a relevant role in several important European initiatives as: the Lisbon Treaty, the Lisbon and the Europe 2020 strategy (the EU’s development agenda), the Eurozone reform, the interface in sustainable development with EU strategic partners US, China, Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa. More recently, the European Pillar of Social Rights, the plans to respond to the COVID crisis, the roadmap for EU’s future, EU inputs for the UN reform and the UN Summit of the Future.
Rodrigues is currently the President of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), a European political foundation located in Brussels, financed by the EU budget to support EU policy-making and debate. Rodrigues also chairs the Advisory Board of the Think-Tank Re-Imagine Europa created by Giscard d’Estaing and located in Brussels.
In academic terms, Rodrigues was full professor of European economic policies in in the Lisbon University Institute and in the European Studies Institute – Université Libre de Bruxelles and assessor of the Oxford University Europaeum Programme. Rodrigues was also the chair of the European Commission Advisory Board for socio-economic sciences. Rodrigues is author of more than one hundred publications and delivered more than one thousand key-note speeches across Europe and other continents.
