The Minister of Foreign Affairs, João Gomes Cravinho, said on Wednesday that Portugal will continue this year “supporting Ukraine, in its search for a peace that is fair and that strengthens and does not weaken the international order.”
Cravinho, who was speaking at the opening session of the Diplomatic Seminar 2023, an annual event organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MNE) that brings together all the ambassadors and/or heads of Portuguese diplomatic missions, stressed that, in a year that begins “with contours of great difficulty and disorder in the international system”, Portugal’s options regarding support for Ukraine, “are clear.
At the same time, he stated that he wanted the entire EMN “to mobilize for a careful reading of a rapidly changing world, contributing to the proper positioning” of Portugal.
“Prudence and a certain dose of pessimism about what can go wrong at the international level can and must be balanced with confidence in the capabilities of our diplomacy to find possible paths to peace and dialogue,” he defended.
He also stressed that “within the European Union (EU) itself” we are living “times of transformation too”, so it has no choice but to “become a geostrategic power”, a transformation for which “three unavoidable priorities” . they show up
The first is “to have a clear path for the relationship with the neighbourhood”, in reference to new adhesions -which have not existed and are not foreseen “in the near horizon”, although there are new candidate countries-, and which imply “important transformations internal to the institutions”, which “are not on the horizon either.
“If it is true that enlargement has become a geostrategic imperative, it is also true that institutional and financial reform is an essential factor in the enlargement map that Portugal must contribute”, he stressed.
The second priority for the EU to become a geostrategic power is “the return of Europe to the status of commercial superpower.”
It is, he continued, “a status that we had for decades, but that we abandoned due to a lack of strategic vision and the strength of particular interests in different countries.”
“Today we see a great inability to use trade policy to project European interests. What was the jewel in the crown of the European Union’s foreign relations today represents an anachronistic obstacle in deepening relations with countries and regions that would like to be closer to us”.
For this reason, he considered it urgent to help the European Commission “to fully play its role, beginning with agreements in Latin America, with Chile, Mexico and Mercosur.” [Mercado Comum do Sul]”, now that there is “a new dynamic in Brazil”, he stressed, referring to the return of Lula da Silva to the Presidency of that country, and added: “India is another country with which we have to have a macrostrategic vision to break with the predominance of microinterests and microideas”.
The third priority, defended the head of Portuguese diplomacy, is that “the Europe of Defense cannot be postponed”, which “means several things”.
“From the beginning, the promotion of the ability to plan and carry out military activities at the European level (…), a process of procurement harmonization, something that only started through the European Defense Agency, [e] the rapid and deep development of an ecosystem of defense industries in the European space, something that is also taking its first steps and that needs to be assumed by European governments as a priority”, he listed.
“There are important developments, such as the European combat aircraft project, but we need to greatly expand the range of common activities,” he continued, noting: “All of this will cost money, but it will also produce economic and scientific benefits, and, in the context we live in, we have to understand this priority”.
He also stressed that “naturally, it is important that this process is carried out in synergy with NATO, in complementarity and taking advantage of the added value of each institution.”
“In relation to these three necessary dynamics in the EU, the link between enlargement and institutional reform, the promotion of an ambitious trade policy and the consolidation of a Europe of Defense, Portugal has a role to play,” he stressed.
Source: TSF
