Assunção Cristas

Maria da Assunção de Oliveira Cristas Machado da Graça ( born September 28, 1974 in Luanda, Angola) is a Portuguese lawyer, university professor and politician.

In the government, which was formed after the parliamentary elections of 2011, she took over on June 21, 2011, the Office of a Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Sea, Environment, Spatial Planning and Regional Development.

Life

Assunção Cristas was ( officially " Uberseeprovinz " ) Angola born in the former Portuguese colony, and arrived shortly thereafter with her family to Portugal. Her father was the owner of a coffee plantation in northwestern Angola and had seven children. Assunção Cristas completed a legal studies at the Law Faculty of the University of Lisbon, where she reached the final in 1997. She married Tiago Pereira dos Reis Machado da Graça, a mother of three children and practicing Catholic is.

Professional career

During her last two years of study was Assunção Cristas ' Monitor' " at the Law Faculty of the University of Lisbon. After her graduation, she was there from 1997 to 1999 assistant. Admission as a lawyer, she received after the appropriate tests in 1999. She practiced as part of a law firm, but in 2004 a lecturer at the Law Faculty of the New University of Lisbon. She did her doctorate in the field of private law with a dissertation on contract law in banking. 2005 successes then her appointment as professor at the initial stage, in 2009 their promotion to professor level 2 ( professora Associada ). During these years she also taught as an adjunct assistant professor at the Academy of Police Sciences and Internal Security. Since 2010 she has been a legal advisor in a well-known law firm.

Political career

As a non-party was Assunção Cristas 2002 Assessor of the Minister of Justice and headed to 2005, the Study Group on Legislation and planning. In 2007, she joined the CDS, the most conservative party in Portugal, which is ranked in magnitude behind the PS and the PSD, and there was then in opposition. She got there quickly in the leadership group, and in 2009 was vice-chair. In the parliamentary elections of 2009 and 2011, she was elected through the electoral district of Leiria deputies; 2009 to 2011 she was deputy parliamentary leader.

In June 2011 she was a member of the delegation of the CDS, which negotiated a coalition with the election winner PSD. In the government that emerged from these negotiations, it is a ministry entrusted, summarizing the two previously existing ministries and is responsible for a significant number of subject areas: agriculture and development of rural areas, sea and fisheries, environment, spatial planning and regional development. This corresponds to a predetermined Pedro Passos Coelho, Prime Minister of the line to reduce drastically in the course of the general austerity measures the number of ministers and ministries. As part of a government reshuffle the environment and spatial planning in 2013 from the jurisdiction of Assunção Cristas were spun off and now form a separate ministry.