António Vitorino

Director General

IOM, Switzerland

António Vitorino was elected as the tenth Director General of the International
Organization for Migration by its Member States, taking office on 1 October 2018.
He served as European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, from 1999 to 2004.
Prior to joining the European Commission, António Vitorino served as Deputy Prime Minister of Portugal and Minister of Defense, from 1995 to 1997.
His career also includes tenures as Portugal’s State Secretary for Parliamentary Affairs
(from 1983 to 1985), member of the Government of Macau in charge of Administration and
Justice (from 1986 to 1987), member of the Portuguese Parliament (from 1980 to 2007), and member of the European Parliament (from 1994 to 1995), where he chaired the Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs Committee in charge of Migration, Asylum, Justice and Fundamental Rights.
He served as Judge of the Portuguese Constitutional Court from 1989 to 1994.
For more than 25 years he served as Assistant Professor and Professor of Constitutional
Law, International Human Rights Law, European Union Law on Justice and Home Affairs at the Lisbon Law School and Lisbon Nova University.
He has also served as President of Notre Europe/Jacques Delors Institute in Paris (from
2011 to 2016), Board member of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in Washington, D.C. (from 2005 to 2013), founding member of MPI’s Transatlantic Council on Migration (from 2007 to 2018), and chair of the New York-based Advisory Board of the International Migration Initiative (from 2015 to 2017). In Portugal, António Vitorino was Commissioner of the Gulbenkian Foundation Forum on Migration and the Civil Society Platform for the Integration of Migrants (from 2005 to 2007).
António Vitorino was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1957 and holds a Master degree in Law and Political Science from the Lisbon Law School (1986). He is a member of the Portuguese Bar Association since 1982 and is fluent in Portuguese, English, French and Spanish.