PM to chair review of Portuguese presidency on Monday

  • Lusa
  • 2 July 2021

The fourth Portuguese presidency of the EU Council ended on June 30, handing over to Slovenia to lead the Council for the next six months.

Portugal’s Prime Minister António Costa will on Monday chair a ceremony to take stock of the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Secretary of State for European Affairs, Ana Paula Zacarias.

Entitled “Review of the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the EU,” the ceremony begins at 3:30 p.m. at the Cultural Centre of Belém in Lisbon, with video messages from the presidents of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, the European Council, Charles Michel, and the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, according to the programme of the event, to which Lusa has had access.

This will be followed by speeches by the Secretary of State for European Affairs, Ana Paula Zacarias, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, before the closing address by the head of government.

The fourth Portuguese presidency of the EU Council ended on June 30, handing over to Slovenia to lead the Council for the next six months.

The Portuguese presidency ended on Wednesday with a summit on recovery, organised by the Finance Ministry, which brought together European ministers, commissioners, MEPs and experts in Lisbon to discuss reform of the European economy after the Covid-19 pandemic and the EU’s economic governance model.

At the summit of European leaders on June 24 and 25, António Costa presented to his counterparts an assessment of the Portuguese presidency, stressing that Portugal had fulfilled the motto he had defined: “It was time to act and we acted,” he said.

On June 30, in time for the handover, the Prime Minister released a series of 10 messages on his official Twitter account highlighting the achievements of the presidency.

“Today we conclude the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the EU honouring the motto ‘Time to Act, for a Fair, Green and Digital Recovery’ by fulfilling our three priorities: economic and social recovery, development of the European Pillar of Social Rights and strategic autonomy of an EU open to the World,” António Costa wrote.

Among the results, the Prime Minister pointed out in particular the priority given to the “coordination of the response to the pandemic and vaccination”, progress in the approval of “all the regulations of the next financial framework 2021-2027” and the approval by all member states of the own resources decision.

Costa also highlighted the “social commitment of Porto agreed with social partners, civil society and European institutions”, the approval of the first Climate Law, the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the Digital Certificate and ‘EllaLink'”, the undersea cable linking Europe to Latin America.

In terms of external relations, the Prime Minister highlighted the EU-India Summit and the approval of the EU mission to support Mozambique, and, in terms of defending European values, he pointed out that the presidency “advanced the Annual Dialogue of the Rule of Law mechanism and the hearings of Hungary and Poland under article 7 of the EU Treaty.”