to pass. In 1999, he headed the CDS-PP list to the European Parliament, got elected but only remained in Brussels less than six months. In 2001 he ran for Mayor of Lisbon and was soundly defeated, but got enough votes to be elected member of the City Council. Despite running under the slogan "I shall remain" (in Portuguese: "Eu fico"), he left City Council shortly afterwards to focus on the 2002 elections. In 1993, Paulo Portas said of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa that he was an unreliable source for O Independente's, and had given an account of a political VIP dinner that had never taken place going as far as inventing that the soup served during the dinner was Vichyssoise. Later, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in 1999 when he was leader of Portugal's Social Democratic Party (PSD), sought an elections alliance with Paulo Portas's CDS-PP that was initially agreed but collapsed shortly. Marcelo then had to resign from the PSD leadership. Minister of Defence, 2002-05 In the 2002 legislative elections, the CDS-PP won 8.7 percent of the vote and 14 Parliament seats, which were sufficient to form a government majority with the PSD that won the election. The CDS-PP participated in two coalition governments from April 2002 to March 2005 and Portas served as Minister of State and National Defence in the first (Durão Barroso) and Minister of State, National Defence and Maritime Affairs in the second (Pedro Santana Lopes). As Minister of Defence, he presided over important reforms of the military, such as abolishing conscription, but his most lasting legacy was the upgrade of military equipment in the context of the 2003 "Military Programming Law" that envisaged a major boost in military equipment spending to 5,341 million euros, including two submarines and 260 combat vehicles that would become the subject of much controversy after he left office. As Minister of Defense, Paulo Portas was also determinant in aligning Portugal with George W. Bush's 2003 Iraq invasion by saying he had personally "seen irrefutable evidence of weapons of mass destruction" while on an official visit to Washington. He was subsequently awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service by the USA's Defense Department. Back in Parliament, 2006–11 In the 2005 early elections, the two incumbent coalition parties suffered a crushing defeat, with CDS-PP losing 60,000 votes and two of its fourteen seats in Parliament. Paulo Portas assumed the