Mário Lino

Mário Lino Soares Correia ( born May 31, 1940 in Lisbon, Portugal), Mário Lino mostly, is a Portuguese politician of the Socialist Party and since 2005 Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communications in the government Sócrates.

Life

He studied engineering, he graduated in 1965 at the Lisbon Instituto Superior Técnico of the Technical University of Lisbon. His study of the hydrology and water management, he joined in 1972 at the University of Colorado, where he also received his doctorate then.

End of the seventies helped Lino in rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure in the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique. In the eighties, Lino was on the boards of the newspapers and the Caminho Avante! operates, as well as a member of various water infrastructure companies and state commissions of water management.

Until 1991, Mário Lino was a member of the Communist Party of Portugal PCP. Gorbachev's reforms, his resignation and the collapse of the USSR sparked a warehouse struggle within the party, also the election results of the PCP declined steadily. As Mário Lino strongly made ​​on the one hand for an urgent reform of the party and on the other hand deliberately provoked, the party leadership decided to exclusion. Then was Mário Lino as an independent between 1994 and 1996 was a member of the Lisbon town meeting. Between 1996 and 2002 he headed the state water company Aguas de Portugal.

In spring 2005 the newly elected Socialist Prime Minister José Sócrates appointed him as the new Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communication in the new government. In the same year moved Lino then the Socialist Party.

As Transport Minister Lino particularly active for two large, however controversial infrastructure projects, which should be brought within the scope of his duties to the realization or at least construction started. On the one hand is to be built a new, normalspuriges railway high-speed network modeled on the French TGV trains between Lisbon, Porto and Madrid. On a to held with Spain Conference of Transport Ministers of the two States in Santiago de Compostela, he strengthened himself for a greater cooperation between the two countries. Consequently examined the Portuguese Attorney General's Office on a complaint, the case, as several members of the army Lino accused as supporters of Iberismus and " traitors of the fatherland". The treason is punishable under Portuguese law and is punishable with up to 20 years in prison. The Attorney General's Office terminated the investigation briefly respond.

On the other hand, promotes the Lino has existed for years, plans for the construction of a new Lisbon major airport. He sparked a big debate about the choice of location in which the government of José Sócrates strongly argued for the construction in the north of Lisbon town of Ota. In contrast, opponents calling for the construction of the airport in Alcochete in the Margem Sul do Tejo. Furthermore, the statement Linos, the Margem Sul do Tejo is a desert and in a desert no airports would be built, the discussion also won its sharpness.

Mário Lino is married and has two sons.