The Prime Minister, António Costa, travels to Reykjavik on Monday as part of an official visit to Iceland, before participating on Tuesday and Wednesday, also in this country, in the Council of Europe summit.
According to a national diplomatic source, this will be the first visit by a Portuguese head of government to Iceland and the first high-level visit since the visit of the then President of the Republic Mário Soares in 1993.
António Costa arrives in Reykjavík late in the morning and will immediately have a working lunch with the Prime Minister of Iceland, Katrin Jakobsdóttir, in which the deepening of bilateral cooperation will be discussed.
According to the Lisbon executive, the greatest potential for cooperation is in the area of renewable energy, which is “one of the commitments of the governments of both countries, which represents new opportunities for Portuguese companies that supply equipment for renewable energy plants from turbines, transformers, generators and small-scale solar solutions to off-grid power production.”
In the middle of the afternoon, the Prime Minister visits Selfoss, about 40 kilometers from Reykjavik, the Geothermal Power Plant, the largest geothermal electricity production plant in Iceland and one of the largest in the world, with 303 megawatts of installed capacity.
In this session, António Costa will chair the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Portuguese Energy Agency (ADENE) and the Icelandic National Energy Authority, which aims to establish a cooperation framework between the two entities in terms of exchange of knowledge, technical collaboration and development of joint projects.
A cooperation memorandum will also be signed in the areas of energy efficiency and energy and geothermal, a ceremony after which António Costa will travel to Carbfix, which is an industrial unit for the capture and mineralization of carbon dioxide.
In the late afternoon, before attending a reception for the Portuguese community, the Prime Minister is received by the Mayor of Reykjavik, Dagur Eggertsson, for a visit to the Icelandic capital’s ocean cluster.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, also in Reykjavik, António Costa will participate in the Council of Europe Summit, in which he will support the creation of a record of years caused by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
This will be one of the main decisions that will result from the Summit of the Council of Europe, a body from which the Russian Federation was suspended on February 25, 2022 and excluded on March 16 of the same year.
A national diplomatic source told the Lusa agency that the completion of this record of damages caused by Russia in the war against Ukraine is considered “a first step towards the subsequent creation of a compensation mechanism.”
Source: TSF
