Brexit deal satisfactory and Portugal fought for it, Foreign Minister says
The Portuguese Foreign Minister reacted to the draft deal reached by the UK, to leave the EU. According to the minister, the draft agreement "ensures that the financial commitments are honoured.
Portugal’s Foreign Minister said on Thursday that the draft deal reached for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union is “very satisfactory” and added that Portugal was among the country’s that fought hardest for this result.
“The agreement is quite satisfactory from my point of view and, above all, it is very satisfactory from the point of view of Portugal’s interests,” Augusto Santos Silva told Lusa and radio station Antena 1, on the sidelines of the 26th Ibero-American Summit, in Antigua, Guatemala late on Wednesday.
According to the minister, the draft agreement, “solves in a very reasonable way the issue of the rights of citizens,” and “ensures that the financial commitments of the United Kingdom are honoured by the United Kingdom until the end of this multi-annual period.”
Alongside this it is a very positive deal as “it makes it possible to respect the original geographic indications,” and because it prevents “any problem in Northern Ireland,” he said.
Santos Silva said that “Portugal stood alongside those that battled most for a deal to be struck.”
The minister noted that, if the agreement goes ahead there will be a “transitional period until the end of 2020, in which, in practice, everything will continue as before, except for the UK’s participation in European decisions,” which gives time to prepare and negotiate the future relationship between the two sides.
LUSA