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Miguel José Lopes Romão is the “discreet” man who became the protagonist of the case of false information about the prosecutor who will represent Portugal in the European Prosecutor’s Office. This Monday she presented her resignation as director general of Justice Policy and Minister Francisca van Dunem accepted her resignation, “taking into account the latest events.”
Always linked to the Law and with a collaboration always very close to the Socialist Party, who knew him during his professional life classifies him as a “gentleman”, “super-educated” and with “a great sense of honor”. It was precisely his sense of honor that led him to resign “complying with the Republican logic that administrative errors that affect the reputation and dignity of the public service must be assumed by the person in charge of the service,” according to the statement. which he insisted on publishing on the website of the General Directorate of Justice Policy after meeting with the Minister of Justice.
However, the statement also says that the minister learned of the errors and ended up being removed from the site, in a case that became even more controversial throughout the day, forcing António Costa to come to the field to support the minister. A support announced in advance by the president himself Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
But, after all, who is Miguel Romão?
At 43, the now former Director General for Justice Policy has always been torn between the Lisbon Law School and a close collaboration with the Socialist Party, with a brief foray into journalism.
In law, he was a colleague of João Tiago Silveira (of whom Miguel Romão was always close), Domingos Farinho (the famous ghostwriter José Sócrates), João Taborda da Gama (son of Jaime Gama and former Secretary of State for Local Administration of the Government of Passos Coelho), Pedro Lomba (also former Secretary of State for the Government of Passos Coelho) and the humorist Luís Filipe Borges.
With a strong political consciousness of the left marked by times of student defiance (from the youngest in high school to the oldest in the universities), but far from the radicalisms that usually mark the youth, Miguel Romão has always known himself together to his peers as someone calm, diplomatic and pragmatic.
Statement blaming the minister in the case of the European prosecutor removed from the DGPJ website
And with a refined taste in terms of literary and cinematographic tastes. So much so that he founded with Luís Filipe Borges and the writer Nuno Costa Santos the literary magazine INVENTIO – of which he was director. INVENTIO was not a fiefdom of the law, but it also received contributions from Alexandre Borges (screenwriter, Observer collaborator and brother of Luís Filipe) and Inês Barahona (playwright), neighbors in front of the Faculty of Letters – which attests to the opening to others. ways of thinking.
It is still in his student days that Romão also began to explore his curiosity for journalism and communication. Through the Borges (Alexandre and Luís), the future jurist began to collaborate in the journalist Luís Osório’s “Zaping” program, which in 2000 became visible when it was broadcast on RTP 2.
Miguel Romão graduated from the Lisbon Law School in 2000. A good student, he immediately joined as a trainee assistant in October of that year and since then he has taught various subjects in his area of specialization, legal-historical sciences, such as, for example, History and Philosophy of Law, History of International Relations and History of Legal Thought.
We were in the last days of Guterrismo but the young socialists, like Miguel Romão, still did not know what the swamp would become. Romão, a young moderate leftist and Socialist Youth activist, had the opportunity to join the Ministry of Justice, then led by António Costa, at exactly the same time that he began teaching at the Lisbon Law School.
Case of the European prosecutor. The Director General of the General Directorate of Justice Policy resigns
And he did not join any office. He was appointed deputy for Diogo Lacerda Machado, then Secretary of State for Justice and later known as the “best friend” of António Costa, a minister who demonstrated his political power by causing the resignation of Secretary of State for Finance, Ricardo Sá. Fernandes in December 2000.
Costa ended up demonstrating the fragility of the political authority of Prime Minister António Guterres, who a year later resigned to avoid “the swamp” after the resounding defeat of the PS in the municipalities where Pedro Santana Lopes defeated João Soares in Lisbon and Rui. Rio beat Fernando Gomes in Porto.
Miguel Romão took advantage of the time of the Government of Durão Barroso (2002/2004) to commit to an academic career, completing his master’s degree in 2004 and expanding the range of subjects he taught at the Lisbon Law School. But without losing his relationship with the Ministry of Justice, where he was legal advisor to the Office of Legislative Policy and Planning until 2004.
Journalism and communication, however, continued to call him outside the law. The connection between Miguel Romão and Alexandre and Luís Filipe Borges with Luís Osório had taken root and when Osório took over the management of the newspaper A Capital in May 2004, he challenged the triple “Zaping” to accompany him.
From that year and two months (May 2004 / June 2005) Miguel Romão will keep some of his best professional memories. He became a journalist and lived through that time with the intensity of his youth. Together with the Borges brothers, the lawyer was part of a kind of creative office that helped Luís Osório think about the newspaper, having also launched a weekly opinion column that helped him stay connected with the current political situation. In the later days of “The Capital” he became a manager of the owner company.
The newsroom knew of their connection to the PS and tried to use their knowledge and information to try to reach the ‘holes’. Something rare in a newsroom, journalists keep the memory of correction and courtesy of Miguel Romão.
A colleague, friend and politically close to João Tiago Silveira, Miguel Romão has always been in the orbit of the group of young Turks of the PS that had António Costa as the main political reference in the PS. As Costa was the great political ally of José Sócrates in his rise to power in the PS and in the country, Tiago Silveira was appointed Secretary of State for Justice and Miguel Romão, advisor to Minister Alberto Costa.
It was in the Socratic years that Romão was promoted for the first time to the position of Director General, directing the General Directorate of International Relations between 2006 and 2007 and the General Directorate of Justice Policy between January and September 2008. He also became Deputy Secretary General of the Conference of Ministers of Justice of the Ibero-American Countries and also participated in the Joint Committee for the implementation of the 2004 Concordat.
The image that his colleagues in the university and journalism had of him also persisted in the Ministry of Justice. In the fiery years of Soratism, when the Prime Minister himself showed an authoritarian record to the judiciary, buying the war at the end of the judicial holidays, Miguel Romão stood out for his diplomacy, pragmatism and discretion.
He did not collaborate with the second Government of José Sócrates and dedicated himself to a doctorate in Law, in the branch of Historical-Legal Sciences, which he finished in 2013.
In the years of the troika, Romão also published an academic work on the history of the prison system, a subject to which he devoted much study.
His activism in the PS comes from his youth and reached its peak when he collaborated in the electoral program with which António Costa ran for the 2015 legislatures. João Tiago Silveira was the national coordinator and challenged his friend to gather the necessary contributions for the Justice area.
The effort with which he did so did not hide a natural ambition to have a prominent role in the future political design of the Ministry of Justice of a possible government of António Costa. João Tiago Silveira, by the way, was a very popular name for the portfolio that had already been from Costa. The surprise of the contraption that overthrew the minority government Passos Coelho / Paulo Portas brought another gamble: Deputy Attorney General Francisca Van Dunem instead of João Tiago Silveira.
Tiago Silveira ended up betting on a career in business law, in the office of Morais Leitão Galvão Teles, a world that has nothing to do with Miguel Romão.
Romão ended up being invited to be the chief of staff of Secretary of State Helena Mesquita Ribeiro, Francisca Van Dunem’s right-hand man, a position that clearly did not correspond to his abilities or expectations. The fact that the relationship with Judge Mesquita Ribeiro is not the best also contributed to those who were not even a year in office.
Miguel Romão was never part of the circle of Minister Francisca Van Dunem, a politician very jealous of her space and very strict in the access she gives to her office.
More than two years after ceasing to be chief of staff, Romão was appointed as his replacement director general of Justice Policy on November 30, 2018. On December 11, 2020, Francisca Van Dunem appointed him permanently.
The two years he spent in office ended up being marked by strong budgetary restrictions due to the harsh policy of captivity of Minister Mário Centeno, which allowed him to control the budget deficit. Any relevant expenditure of several hundred euros, such as the trip to Brussels of technicians from the Ministry of Justice to participate in meetings of the European Union, had to go through bureaucratic scrutiny of an authorization from the Ministry of Finance.
The disappointment ended on Monday, and the way Miguel Romão resigned is directly associated by several of his friends with his “great sense of honor.” Despite being “discretissimo”, his conscience did not stop imposing his own, long and enlightening statement -very different from the telegraphic statement of Minister Francisca Van Dunem- where he invoked the “republican logic” to assume his responsibilities but without saying it the famous letter containing false information about lawyer José Guerra “was prepared following instructions received and its full content was known to the Office of the Minister of Justice from that date.”
At the end of the night, António Costa reinforced his confidence in Francisca Van Dunem with a last sentence that responds to his former deputy and former adviser: “The lapses originated in a note produced by the General Directorate of Justice Policy and communicated to the Reper and with mere knowledge to file the Cabinet of the Minister of Justice ”.
This is the end of disappointment.
Text corrected at 00:40. Miguel Romão was a journalist but not an advisor to either António Costa or Alberto Martins in the Ministry of Justice
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