Fernando Medina
Fernando Medina Maciel Almeida Correia (born 10 March 1973) is a Portuguese economist and politician Socialist Party (PS) who served as Mayor of Lisbon from 2015, succeeding António Costa, to 2021. Medina lost his re-election bid in the 2021 local elections, and was succeeded as Mayor by Carlos Moedas. Early life and education. Medina was born in Porto to Edgar Marciel Almeida Correia and Maria Helena Guimarães Medina. He has a degree in Economics from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto. He also holds a master's degree in Economic Sociology from the Instituto  Superior de Economia e Gestão. Political career. During his time at university, Medina was the President of the Faculty's Students' Union and then the President of the Students' Unions' Federation of Porto. From 2000 to 2002, Medina served as adviser to Prime Minister António Guterres, first on education and science and later on economic policy. Following the 2005 national elections, incoming Prime Minister José Sócrates appointed Medina as Secretary of State for Employment and Professional Training, serving under Minister of Labor José António Vieira da Silva. In June 2021, Medina faced calls for his resignation as a result of  his government's decision of January 2021 to share the personal information of at least three Lisbon-based Russian dissidents with Russian authorities. In response, he ruled out stepping down and instead apologized for what he initially described as a "bureaucratic error". Afterwards, municipal authorities admitted that since 2011 Lisbon’s city hall had regularly disclosed the personal information of human rights activists, including "names, identification numbers, home addresses and telephone numbers", with several repressive regimes, including Angola, China and Venezuela. Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa described the situation as "deeply regrettable" and declared that everyone deserved to have  their fundamental rights respected in a democratic country. After the Socialist Party's absolute majority victory in the 2022 Portuguese legislative election, he was sworn in as a member of parliament, and two days later, on March 30, 2022, was appointed Minister of Finance of the XXIII Constitutional Government.