Silva Pereira holds a master's degree in Law from the University of Lisbon.

In his home country, he was member of the Portuguese Parliament from 2002 to 2014, Secretary of State of Spatial Planning and Nature Conservation from 1999 to 2002 in António Guterres' second cabinet, and Minister of the Presidency from 2005 to 2011 in José Sócrates' cabinets.

[3] In addition to his committee assignments, Silva Pereira has been part of the Parliament's delegation for relations with Japan since 2014.

Together with Danuta Hübner, Silva Pereira drafted a 2018 report in which they called on the European Parliament to hold 46 of the 73 seats which will be lost after Brexit in reserve for possible new class of MEPs representing pan-European constitutencies and for countries that might join the EU in the future; their proposal was later rejected by a parliamentary majority.

[4] Pereira's work on the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement earned him the Order of the Rising Sun, the country's highest honor, in 2019.