President Lula anticipates trip to Portugal; previously, attends the US climate event
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is leaving for Lisbon this Thursday evening (20th), the starting point of a trip to Portugal and Spain the first trip to Europe in his third term.
Lula will focus most of his agenda on Portugal, where he will meet with authorities and present the Camões Prize to singersongwriter Chico Buarque. The singer was announced as the winner of the award in 2019, but thenPresident Jair Bolsonaro refused to sign the diploma.
See below for details of the agenda.
The Iberian itinerary, which will have commitments until next Wednesday (26), marks a new stage in the government’s foreign policy after Lula prioritized key trading partners and neighbors in the first trips of the new term. Lula visited:
“The President’s visit is related to revitalizing relations with Europe and the world. Let’s start in Europe with Portugal, Brazil’s gateway to the European Union,” Ambassador Maria Luísa Escorel de Moraes, secretary for Europe and North America at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters.
Schedule in Portugal
- Friday (21): estimated time of arrival in Lisbon
- Saturday (22): attends a welcoming ceremony with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and lays flowers at the tomb of poet Luís de Camões at Jerônimos Monastery in Belém. He has lunch with Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa and attends the meeting of the 13th BrazilPortugal Summit, a bilateral summit that resumed after seven years. The two governments will sign at least 13 documents, including an agreement on the equivalence of primary and secondary school diplomas and another on the recognition of driver’s licenses.
- Sunday (23): no official commitments are foreseen.
- Monday (24): Travel to the city of Matosinhos in the Porto region for the opening of the PortugalBrazil Business Forum. Lula could make the journey on a KC390, a military freighter manufactured by Embraer to help sell the plane. He returns to Lisbon to present the Camões Prize to Chico Buarque.
- Tuesday (25): Lula is honored at a solemn session of the Assembly of the Portuguese Republic.
Schedule in Spain
- Tuesday (25): travels to Madrid to attend a business forum. There is a possibility of meeting with the Spanish King Felipe VI.
- Wednesday (26): The final commitment of the trip was to be a meeting with the country’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, followed by an agreement signing ceremony.
Brazil and Spain are keen to resolve the deadlocks delaying the implementation of the MercosurEuropean Union trade deal as the two countries take over leadership of the two blocs later this year. Bolsonaro’s environmental policies, which led to high levels of deforestation, made negotiations difficult.
The MercosurEuropean Agreement has been negotiated since 1999. Twenty years after the talks started, in 2019, the blocs concluded trade negotiations and a year later the socalled political and cooperation aspects. Since then, the agreement has been reviewed.