The President of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, this Wednesday defended the role of parliaments in strengthening bilateral relations between Portugal and the United Kingdom in the post-Brexit period.
At the end of a visit to the British Parliament, Santos e Silva, at the invitation of his counterpart, Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the House of Commons, emphasized the “contribution at the parliamentary level to the strengthening of bilateral relations between Portugal and the United States”. Kingdom” after the British exit from the European Union.
“Parliament adds to the other plans – the relationship between heads of state, the relationship between governments – the plan of pluralistic representation of Portuguese society and that is why today our interlocutors were able to see how the improvement and increase in bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and Portugal is a unanimous position of the Portuguese Parliament,” he said.
The President of the General Assembly of the Republic traveled together with deputies Sérgio Sousa Pinto (PS and President of the Portugal-UK Parliamentary Friendship Group), Joaquim Miranda Sarmento (PSD Group President), João Dias (PCP) and Isabel Pires (BE) .
During the day, the delegation met with the European Affairs Committee, the Speaker of the House of Lords, John McFall, and members of the UK-Portugal Parliamentary Friendship Group.
During these contacts, they took the opportunity to ask some questions about the Portuguese community, namely about visas and residence permits and about the association of the United Kingdom with the Horizonte programme, which is of interest to Portuguese scientific researchers working in British institutions. to work.
Santos Silva and the Portuguese delegates also attended a plenary session, in the presence of the British Deputy Prime Minister, Oliver Dowden, who represented the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who was absent to participate in the NATO summit in Lithuania.
“While we spoke to the parliamentary delegation, our interlocutors spoke to the majority [parlamentar portuguesa] of today and with the majority of tomorrow, with the minority of today, with the minority of tomorrow. It is very important for them to realize that, in terms of the bilateral relationship between the two countries, this is a priority that cuts across the entire Portuguese parliament,” Santos Silva stressed.
During the visit, he returned the invitation to Lindsay Hoyle to visit the Assembly of the Republic in Lisbon, which the Englishman accepted, with a date to be determined.
Source: DN
