Future of Brazil-Portugal relations will be richer if the CPLP is taken advantage of – Observer
The coordinator of the commemorations of the bicentennial of the independence of Brazil Gonçalo Mello Moura defended this Thursday that the future of relations between his country and Portugal will be much richer if he does not do without the CPLP.
The set elaborated for the relationship between Brazil and Portugal “goes far beyond the bilateral”.
There is now in our relationship the creation of the universe of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries [CPLP] (…) And this is new data from the perspective of our future”, he said.
“We can never be just Brazil and Portugal again. We must be, from now on and forever, two countries in the construction of the CPLP”, reinforced the diplomat.
Gonçalo Mello Mourão spoke at the opening session of the “Brazil Portugal Conference: Perspectives for the Future”, which takes place between this Thursday and Friday at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the event’s organizer.
An initiative that comes as part of the commemorations of the bicentennial of the independence of Brazil, which is celebrated this year.
So for the diplomat, “the future of relations between Brazil and Portugal cannot do without the future of this community”.
“We Brazilians are Latin Americans and you Portuguese are Europeans. But the two of us are much more: we are part of this widespread international community, which expresses its rich cultural variety (…), in Europe, America, Africa and Asia through the Portuguese language”, he defended.
Therefore, “if we limit the future of our bilateral relationship, it will be faithful, without a doubt, but it will be banal, like any other relationship that both will be with various countries, and it will always be in the light of what Portugal’s relations with Spain are, or between Brazil and Argentina”, he said to an audience of Brazilian and Portuguese personalities.
However, “if we place our relationship within the scope of this transcendent reality that is the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries [CPLP]this reality to simulate our nationalities that only the common language, their relationship will surpass the richness of any other bilateral relationship in international relations“, he reinforced.
Therefore, he added: “if we establish ourselves on the Portuguese language, the future of relations between Brazil and Portugal is certainly unimaginably open, more fruitful, (…) wealth”
The coordinator for the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the independence of Brazil, on the Portuguese side, Francisco Ribeiro Telles, stressed that all the heads of state of Portuguese-speaking countries were invited to the ceremonies on September 7th, the day on which the ephemeris, taking place in Brasília.
that it is a gesture that we also understand as a form of tribute to the Portuguese language in the country where four-fifths of its current speakers are found”, underlined the Portuguese ambassador.
Ribeiro Telles remembered that “Portugal and Brazil 5 years a lot in the last 5 years” and that what is intended with the year of the celebration of the bicentennial “is updated as images we have on both sides of the Atlantic, from strategy, to the economy, science, culture and innovation”.
In the specific context, or lines of action, we intend that in the future they may be, in a way, the potential and they intend to have the strategic value of the bonds that have always united Brazil Portugal”, said the Portuguese diplomat in his speech at the conference.
The conference, which runs until Friday in Lisbon, aims to discuss the future of relations between Portugal and Brazil.
Former Portuguese presidents Cavaco Silva and Ramalho Eanes, as well as the former Head of State of Brazil, Michel Temer, and the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, João Gomes Cravinho, were among the speakers this Thursday.
The Ambassador of Brazil in Portugal, Raimundo Carreiro, was among other personalities who gave his speech at the opening session of the event, during which he read a message from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, Carlos França.
At the end, on Friday, the conference will have the intervention of President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.