Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will be in Belgium between Monday and Friday, but the official program of his visit, at the invitation of the Belgian kings, will take place between Tuesday and Thursday, with visits to the three regions of the country: Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders .
According to the published program, the visit will start on Tuesday morning with a welcome ceremony at the Royal Palace in Brussels by Kings Philippe and Mathilde, followed by meetings in the Federal Parliament, with representatives of the House and the Senate, and in the cabinet of Prime Minister Alexander de Croo .
On Tuesday, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will also meet with the president of the Brussels city council, Philippe Close, and a banquet hosted by the kings at the Royal Castle of Laeken.
On Wednesday, the head of state will visit the University of Namur and have lunch in the Governor’s Palace of this province, in the Wallonia region.
Then you will visit the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and attend a fado concert with Kings Philippe and Mathilde at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.
Thursday’s program will take place almost entirely in the Flanders region, starting with a visit to the port of Zeebrugge – which is now part of the large port of Antwerp-Bruges, following a merger in 2022.
The President of the Republic will then go to Bruges, where he will have lunch at the town hall and take a walking tour, meeting Portuguese students from the College of Europe.
His state visit ends at the end of the day on Thursday with a meeting with representatives of the Portuguese community at the town hall of Saint-Gilles in the Brussels region.
According to the Emigration Observatory, approximately 50 thousand people with Portuguese nationality lived in Belgium in 2022.
The Kingdom of Belgium has not received a state visit from a Portuguese president for almost twenty years.
The Presidency of the Republic considers this trip as “an opportunity to strengthen the close friendship and bilateral ties between Portugal and Belgium, in the most diverse dimensions, and also constitutes an opportunity to address relevant issues at European and multilateral level” .
Jorge Sampaio was the last President of the Republic to pay a state visit to Belgium in October 2005, also for three days. As head of state, Aníbal Cavaco Silva was in Belgium twice, in September 2007 and June 2013, but on visits to European institutions.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa visited the European institutions in Brussels in March 2017, when he was received by the kings of Belgium.
In October 2018, the kings of Belgium paid a state visit to Portugal at his invitation.
When the President of the Republic received them at the Palace of Belém at the time, he called Portugal and Belgium two countries that were “close allies” and “friends” in the European Union, the United Nations and NATO, with a “common role” . “For peace on a global level.
Belgium will be the 19th country to receive a state visit from Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, after Mozambique, Switzerland, Cuba, Cape Verde, Senegal, Croatia, Luxembourg, Mexico, São Tomé and Principe, Greece, Egypt, Spain, Angola, China, Ivory Coast, Italy, India and Ireland.
Source: DN
