his priority what he called "economic diplomacy", meaning the generation through diplomacy of business opportunities abroad for Portuguese companies. To that effect, he wrestled control of the Portuguese Foreign Investment and Trade Agency (AICEP) from the Ministry of Economics. In 2013, to attract foreign investments, Paulo Portas instituted "golden visas" to make it possible for non-EU foreigners to obtain Portuguese residency if they invested at least 500,000 euros in Portuguese real estate. By focusing on his duties as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he also managed to distance himself from the difficult decisions related to Portugal's economic austerity program. More than once he kept silent or expressed his disagreement with unpopular measures taken by the government to which he belonged, and on 2 July 2013 he abruptly resigned in protest at the appointment of a Finance Minister (Maria Luís Albuquerque) he did not approve of, a decision he called "irrevocable" but that he subsequently revoked. Deputy Prime-Minister, 2013–15 When Paulo Portas resigned from the government in July 2013, Prime-Minister Passos Coelho feared the end of his coalition government and negotiated with Paulo Portas his permanence in a higher capacity as Deputy Prime-Minister with oversight over economic issues. Paulo Portas also obtained control of the Ministry of Economy where he placed two close associates: minister António Pires de Lima (his close childhood friend) and state secretary Adolfo Mesquita Nunes (his youthful protégé in the CDS-PP party). In control of the key ministries of Economics, Agriculture, Labor and Social Security (held by his CDS-PP ministers), Paulo Portas came to wield political power far beyond the 12% of the national vote his party received in the 2011 elections. As part of his Deputy Prime-Minister attributions, Paulo Portas took charge of the negotiations on Portugal's IMF/EC/ECB-supported program, the terms of which he had publicly declared to be against. However, his only visible act of defiance was the setting up, in December 2013, of a "countdown clock" showing the time remaining until the expiration of the program on 17 May 2014. Through the rest of his mandate that ended in 2015, he raised no major new policy proposals or objections in his capacity as Deputy Prime-Minister, choosing instead to use his economic policy oversight position to travel the world promoting Portuguese companies and products in what appears to have been a continuation of the "economic diplomacy" priority he had established as Minister of Foreign Affairs. In