Madrid (EFE).- The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Costa, will once again share their vision on the issues of the European agenda, in which both have shown great harmony, especially in the energy sphere and in their defense of the H2Med green hydrogen submarine corridor.
Framed in the Atlantic, as a link with Latin America, the summit will take place on Wednesday morning, although an informal dinner for both delegations is scheduled for Tuesday, preceded by a visit by Sánchez and Costa to the House-Museum of the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner literature Jose Saramago, who lived and died in Lanzarote.
The figure of Saramago, whose birth was the centenary last year, and the link it represents for both countries has led Spain to choose this location for the meeting.
Although the summit would not have to be held until the end of the year, given that the previous one, which took place in the Portuguese town of Viana do Castelo, was in November 2022, the Spanish internal agenda -with the different electoral processes planned- and the semester of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union have led both countries to anticipate it without implying, sources from Moncloa have indicated, that the meeting’s agenda lacks content since progress has been made in these months, especially in the field cross-border.
Spain defends that it must go beyond this area of cooperation between the two countries and go hand in hand with Portugal in the defense of their common interests in Europe, which will be reviewed again by Sánchez and Costa in the bilateral meeting with which will open the summit and that the Spanish president will take advantage of to present the Spanish objectives of the European semester of the presidency.
In Moncloa there is no doubt that Spain will have the support of Portugal for this important task, just as was done, in the opposite direction, during the Portuguese presidency.
The good relationship between the two countries, which was seen in the negotiation of the so-called “Iberian exception”, will also serve to ensure that the joint declaration of the summit reflects the commitment to advance in the section Celorico da Beira (Portugal)-Zamora, which is part of H2Med.
If the previous summit had innovation as its motto, this will be the Atlantic, although with an inward-looking focus one of the axes will be the common cross-border development strategy, which will be the subject of some of the agreements that come out of the meeting, to which is expected to be attended by nine Spanish ministers.
Infrastructures will also be in the discussion with progress in the Atlantic corridor and the European transport network. EFE