President

The Assembly at each Annual Session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly elects the President of the Parliamentary Assembly who acts as the highest representative of the Assembly and presides over the meetings of the Assembly. The President is elected for one year and can be re-elected for one more year.

Joao Soares, Member of the Portuguese Parliament, is presently President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. He was elected at the 17th Annual Session, held from 29 June to 3 July 2008 in Astana, Kazakhstan, and unanimosly re-elected to another one-year term at the 18th Annual Session 29 June - 3 July 2009 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

He has been involved in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly since 2002, both as deputy head and, presently, as head of the Portuguese delegation. He has been a Vice-President of OSCE PA and a member of the Assembly’s Bureau since July 2006.

Mr. Soares is a veteran election observer, having participated in numerous election observation missions to, among others, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tajikistan, Serbia, Russia, and the United States -- several times as head and deputy head of the OSCE PA delegation.

President Soares, a Socialist, has been a member of the Portuguese parliament from 1987 to 1990 and again since 2002, elected by the constituency of Lisbon. He is also a member of the Parliamentary Committee on National Defense. He is the former deputy mayor and mayor of Lisbon and is Chairman of UCCLA, the Union of Capital Cities of Portuguese Language. He was a member of Portugal’s State Council between 1998 and 2002.

Mr. Soares is a former member of the European Parliament and of the Bureau of the European Parliament. He has a law degree and is a lawyer and editor. He is married with five children.