Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa will be received on Tuesday noon at the Elysee for a working lunch. Culture, bilateral relations, European and international issues will be at the heart of their exchanges.
In the morning, Antonio Costa visited the exhibition “The Golden Age of the Portuguese Renaissance”, which is showing, for the first time, in the Louvre, fifteen works of the so-called Portuguese early. Indeed, this meeting comes with the launch of the French-Portuguese season, which honors the friendship between the two countries and the strong ties that unite them in the artistic, cultural, scientific, educational and even entrepreneurial fields.
Following this lunch, Antonio Costa will open the exhibition O resto é Sombra, It was presented by the artists Pedro Costa, Roy Chaves and Paolo Nozzolino at the Pompidou Center. He will be accompanied by Minister Plenipotentiary for European Affairs Clement Bonn.
Besides these bilateral issues, the situation in Ukraine, the response that the European Union is providing with one voice in support of Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions against Russia, will be on the list of exchanges between them. The two leaders will take the opportunity to take stock of the work done since the Versailles Summit for European independence in terms of defence, energy, food, environmental and digital transformations. Speaking of the environment, the issue of climate, and more specifically the ocean, will be at the center of their conversations. Portugal will host the next United Nations Conference on the Ocean at the end of this month.
At the international level, Antonio Costa and Emmanuel Macron will give an overview of the situation in Africa, and more specifically in the Sahel and Mozambique, where the two countries are strongly committed to the fight against terrorism.
This lunch is the first official bilateral meeting between the two men since Emmanuel Macron’s re-election. During the second round of the presidential election, Antonio Costa, along with the German chancellor and the Spanish prime minister, called for Emmanuel Macron to vote to block the far-right. The two leaders will meet in Brussels on June 23-24 at the European Council and the Balkan Summit.
