João Rodrigo Reis Carvalho Leão (born 15 February 1974) is a Portuguese economist, university professor, and politician. He served as Minister of Finance in the government of Prime Minister António Costa of Portugal, sworn in on 15 June 2020.
In 2024 Leão was appointed by the Council of the European Union as the Portuguese Member of the European Court of the Auditors, after a hearing and the endorsement of the European Parliament.[1]
He was Minister of State and Finance between 2020 and 2022.
In 2021 he was elected President of the Board of Governors European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
As Minister of Finance, Leão oversaw the government's overhaul plan for ailing TAP Air Portugal amid the COVID-19 pandemic, proposing 2,000 job cuts by 2022, pay cuts of up to 25% and 2 billion euros ($2.46 billion) in extra funds with state guarantees to cover financing needs until 2024.[5]
While Leão was at Ministry of Finance, Portugal achieved in 2019 the first budget surplus of the 45 years of the country's democratic history.[6] During this period, between 2015 and 2022, Portugal was the second country in the EU that the decreased the most its budget deficit from 4,4% to 0,3% and the third country that decreased the most its public debt.
After the peak of the pandemic in 2021, While Leão was Minister of Finance, Portugal was also among the first group of Euro area countries to reach a budget deficit below the European limit of 3%. Portugal's fiscal deficit fell from 5,8% in 2020 to 0.3% of GDP in 2022, significantly better than the budget deficit in the eurozone of 3.6% of GDP. Meanwhile, the decline in Portugal's debt ratio was the third largest in the eurozone between 2020 and 2022. Debt-to-GDP fell 21 p.p. in those 2 years, compared with an average decline of 5.6 p.p. in the eurozone.[7][8]
In 2022, Leão became Portugal’s nominee to succeed Klaus Regling as Managing Director of the European Stability Mechanism;[9][10] his candidacy was later endorsed by the French government[11] and later achieved the majority of the weighted votes in the July 2022 meeting of Board of Governors of the ESM.[12][13] The nomination process narrowed to Leão and Pierre Gramegna, but both pulled out in September 2022 having failed to secure the votes required.[14]
