Millionaire handshakes and pensions aside, Portugal’s former president of the European Commission Durão Barroso has come in for his fair share of criticism in recent years, and has now been labelled the “architect of Portugal’s economic disaster” by the leader of Spain’s anti-austerity Podemos party, Pablo Iglesias – whose book “Disputing Democracy – Politics for times of crisis” goes on sale in Portugal on Friday.
Featured by Expresso today, the book describes Barroso’s nomination to the European Commission as revelation of “Europe’s submission to the United States”.
Apparently proposed by the “pacifist” Tony Blair, Barroso is described as going on holiday on the yacht of a Greek shipping magnate who shortly afterwards “received a €10 million subsidy approved by the European Commission”.
Iglesias’ condemnations continue and follow criticisms late last year from sources in the UK – particular after Barroso’s outgoing ruse of slapping Britain with a €1.7 billion ‘bill’.
At the time, he was called an “oily Eurocrat from the land of sardines”. The head of a “collection of unaccountable, interfering, overpaid paper-shufflers and time-servers”.
As newspapers commented at the time, the insults were unlikely to cause Barroso a moment’s upset as his pension plans and comfortable EU subsidies have seen him laughing all the way to the bank as he travels the (highly paid) university lecture circuit.
