Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

Honourable Ambassadors,
Honourable Heads of Mission,

I am very grateful for the kind words addressed by His Excellency the Reverend Papal Nuncio on behalf of the Diplomatic Corps accredited in Lisbon, expressing your greetings for the New Year, which I am pleased to return. I would be grateful if you transmitted to your Heads of State my sincere wishes for a year of peace and prosperity.

This being the first time I take part in this ceremony as President of the Republic, I must stress the very particular regard I have for diplomatic activity. Throughout my public life I have been a privileged witness of the fundamental role performed by diplomats in building bridges to establish dialogue, strengthening relations between peoples, and surpassing difficult issues. These qualities are urgently required in today’s world.

As a result of its historical legacy, Portugal has an extremely rich and diversified international relationship, as is anyway exemplified by Your Excellencies. This reality must be increasingly used to strengthen Portuguese society and its economy, disclosing opportunities, promoting contacts, and setting up partnerships equally beneficial to the countries with which we are related. In this sense, Your Excellencies’ contribution is inestimable and will count with the all the support of the President of the Republic.

Continuing my earlier approaches, in 2006, with the Ambassadors of the Member States and candidates of the European Union, I intend to promote meetings with other groups of regional Ambassadors in 2007. I thus wish to be able to benefit from a direct and less formal contact with you, which may allow our exchanging ideas over the opportunities and difficulties with which the world is currently facing us and our relationship.

Honourable Ambassadors,
Honourable Heads of Mission,

It is not my intention today, to refer all the conflicts, political decisions and challenges which concerned us throughout 2006. Both the European Union and the Portuguese Government have pronounced their opinions and decisions. When justified, the positions assumed were accompanied by definite decisions, which are a clear indication of our exertion to contribute towards peace amongst peoples and the dignity of the human being and not to agree with actions and policies which would deny such causes.

As such, more than repeating the long list of issues which we dispense being reminded of, I would like to emphasize at this time the humanism that links us all and which, in the name of the future, requests that we learn how to implant, in the relationship between States and peoples, the stamp of tolerance, of mutual respect and of the valuation of human dignity.

This is not a signal of ingenuity, inspired by the spirit of the festive season. I well know that each of our countries has its own interests, often a result of difficult internal consensus. I well know that the defence of such interests does not always coincide with idyllic scenarios of complicity and understanding.

But I sincerely believe that in a world of increasingly stronger interdependencies and increasing shared challenges, the isolated defence of the national interest will be increasingly difficult.

Honourable Ambassadors,

The priorities of Portuguese foreign policy, apart from the integration in the European Union and the participation in other international organizations to which we actively contribute, include a very close relationship with Africa and with Latin America, especially with the countries with which we share the same language, without naturally forgetting the strong transatlantic links and, also, a growing proximity with the continent of Asia.

The African continent, often forgotten, has always received from Portugal, even if due to the historical and cultural links which we share with several countries, a very special regard. And I am very glad to note that, in the last few years, the tendency to ignore this region of the globe is being substituted by dynamic steps to provide partnerships and cooperation, crucial for its development and to peace.

My first visit abroad, as Head of State, was to Africa and was the result of a welcome invitation from President Pedro Pires of Cape Verde, with which I was very honoured, to take part in the ceremonies of his inauguration. I had, once more, the opportunity to confirm the extraordinary example that Cape Verde constitutes to all of us. Challenging all the adversities with which nature confronts it, Cape Verde knew how to establish a course towards progress and development based on a stable and mature democracy, and is today a credible and unchanging partner in the Euro-Atlantic area.

I had the opportunity to return to Africa before last summer, this time to take part in the Summit of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), laudably organized and conducted by Guinea-Bissau. Regarding Guinea-Bissau, I sincerely hope that dialogue is definitively chosen as the only course for the social and economic development that its people have a right to.

The Bissau Summit, following the outstanding Presidency of São Tomé and Príncipe, was an important occasion to assess, jointly with the remaining Heads of State and of Government who were present, the work which is being carried out within CPLP, and check the important range of areas where the cooperation amongst members of the Organization asserts itself.

It was also the occasion to note the very significant progress that is taking place in Angola and Mozambique, as well as the continued assistance that the situation in East-Timor requires from all of us.

But there is still much left to do and Portugal is firmly striving to give its contribution. It was with that spirit that we proposed to host and organize the 2008 CPLP Summit.

Bilaterally the relations with our neighbouring country, Spain, are particularly important for Portugal. My first State Visit was to Spain, at the kind invitation of His Majesty and my good friend, King Juan Carlos de Bourbon.

As stated in the speeches I delivered during the visit, “nothing that happens in Portugal is irrelevant to Spain and nothing that happens in Spain is irrelevant to Portugal”. Having taken part, with the then President of the Government of Spain, Felipe Gonzalez, in the first Portuguese-Spanish Summit Meetings, I can well assess the progress in the relations between the two countries, since our simultaneous adhesion to the European Union. But there is still a potential for cooperation which we need to exploit.

Honourable Ambassadors

The History of European integration was written at the negotiating table, but also, and at times we seem to forget it, with blood and bravery, in the streets of many of our cities. Budapest, in 1956, was a fair example. That was what I wanted to stress, to the Portuguese, when I attended the commemorations of the 50 years of the Hungarian Revolution, a true symbol of the will of a people to embrace European values, and the principles of the Rule of Law and of democratic pluralism.

It was also an occasion to exchange particularly friendly and interesting views with President Khöler, of Germany, a country which, with Portugal, is included in the triumvirate of Presidents of the EU in the next 18 months, as well as for extremely informative and cordial meetings with the Presidents of Hungary and of Ukraine.

Another of the areas which constitute a priority for Portuguese foreign policy is Latin America, a continent with which Portugal shares special historical and cultural affinities and in which Brazil, a sister country, is a fundamental figure. I want to take this opportunity to salute the beginning, on January 1st, of the second mandate of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, to whom I wish every success.

It was during the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union, in 1992, that the first meeting UE-MERCOSUL took place, a moment which I recall with particular pleasure, especially when I view the route we have travelled, thwarting the scepticism with which that initiative of ours was received in some of the capitals.

I was thus very satisfied to have taken part in the Iberian-American Summit in Montevideo. I noted that, between the meeting where the procedure started, at Guadalajara, in Mexico, and the Montevideo Summit, only two faces around the meeting tables were the same: that of His Majesty, the King of Spain and my own. Apart from the politically more visible results, I register the opening to the civil society that the Iberian-American process shows today, with the great number of initiatives taking place simultaneously, including dialogues and consultations between different types of institutions, both entrepreneurial and trade unions.

Also in this occasion I benefited from opinions relating to the whole world, the Iberian-American relationship and the bilateral relations which were conveyed to me in specific bilateral meetings, denoted by great friendship and openness, by the President of Uruguay, who received us so kindly, the President of Chile, the President of Colombia and the then Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Koffi Annan, to whom I wish to reiterate my feelings of admiration for the work he carried out in his two mandates.

In 2009, it will be Portugal’s turn to host the Iberian-American Summit, a clear sign of our exertion in the success of this important forum for peoples to come together and to promote cooperation between States.

I have always defended that Portugal should assert itself through the credibility of its attitudes, which will be in line with the answers to the commitments it assumes within the context of the International Organizations in which it actively takes part. We have, in spite of the known budgetary constraints, tried to validly contribute to the efforts to maintain world peace, whether in the framework of the United Nations, or in that of the Atlantic Alliance or the European Union.

The Armed Forces, an essential part of our foreign policy and of the international projection of the Portuguese State, are taking part in multiple international peace operations. In my visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina and to Kosovo, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, I endeavoured to deliver to the Portuguese soldiers a message of fellowship and recognition for their work, singling out the importance of their contribution towards the defence of values of peace, pluralist democracy and respect for human rights.

I will allow myself to include, in this overview of 2006, the launching, last November, following a proposal I made and with my sponsorship, of the Council for Globalization of COTEC-Portugal, which will from now on hold annual meetings.

Portugal must avail itself of the advantages offered by a globalization of which, after all, it was a main forerunner. I believe that this forum, due to the quality of its participants and to the debate it provides, can perform an important role in that sense and, in this way, contribute to the economic and social progress of my country.

Honourable Ambassadors,

The year which is now beginning will be referenced, in respect of Portuguese foreign policy, by the Presidency of the Council of the European Union for the six months ending next December. Portugal is endeavouring its best in the building of a united Europe. The way in which it performed these functions in 1982 and in 2000 stamped the evolution of the integration process, and brought with it a stock of seriousness and credibility that we will certainly know how to maintain.

In the speech I delivered upon the commemorations of the Europe Day, when celebrating the 20th anniversary of Portugal’s entry in the European project, I had the opportunity to assert that “much of what we label today as crisis symptoms is, in a large measure, the result of (its) great success”.

The European Union was aware how to become the area of stability and progress which it proposed, and this attracted other countries; but the enlargement, however, causes us other challenges to which we must jointly know how to answer. I particularly want to salute the recent enlargement which included Bulgaria and Romania, as well as the adhesion of Slovenia to the EURO zone, which I view as very relevant stages of our common project.

The Union was able, opportunely, to answer some of the issues which concerned its peoples, a circumstance which we can surely applaud. But this fact, along with the knowledge that the increasing complexity of the issues cannot agree with isolated national answers, resulted in a growing degree of demand from the Europeans as to what consisted the role of the Union.

It is within this background – demanding, but also promissory – that Portugal will assume the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of the current year.

The objectives of the Portuguese Presidency are inserted in the common programme jointly presented with the current German Presidency – to whose Ambassador I extend my very best wishes of success – and with the Slovenian Presidency, which will take place during the first half of 2008.

Apart from the institutional themes, which will merit our best regard, I would like to signal Portugal’s interest in favouring growth and employment and the strengthening of the conditions of competitiveness, specifically investment in innovation, but not leaving out issues related to energy and the environment.

This ambitious agenda equally foresees the strengthening of the European social model and the follow-up of an integrated approach on the issue of migrations, as well as steps to be taken in the sense of creating an Integrated Maritime Policy.

Externally, the Portuguese Presidency will give special emphasis to Africa, with priority given to the materialization of the II EU-Africa Summit, as well as the Mediterranean and Latin America. The strengthening of our relations with the U.S.A., with whom we share a basis of common values, and the greater intensity of dialogue with Russia, China and India, countries with which high level Summits will be held, will also be part of our priorities.

Moreover, with respect to India, the bilateral meetings which will be held alongside the Summit with the EU during our Presidency will, I am certain, permit assessing the progress which took place following my State Visit to that Country, where I depart tomorrow, at the kind and honourable invitation of President Abdul Kalam. The programme to be accomplished and the complement of my retinue will reflect the excellence of the political relations between Portugal and India and the common will that this degree of understanding will comprise aver greater areas.

With respect to China with which a Summit with the EU will equally take place during our Presidency, 2007 will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Portuguese-Chinese Joint Declaration over Macao and the success of the transition process occurred in that Territory. It will be an important occasion for both countries.

Macao is today a thriving region, which maintains its specific characteristics, with institutions working successfully, in accordance with the principle of “one country, two systems”. Equally, it is an important link in the strategic partnerships between Portugal and China and in the relations between China and the Portuguese speaking countries.

Honourable Ambassadors,
Honourable Heads of Mission,

Thanking you for your presence, I want to wish you all and your respective families a Happy and Joyous New Year, hoping that 2007 will be branded by values of peace, freedom, tolerance and respect for human dignity, the sole way in which we can guarantee, in the name of the humanism that links us, a better world for us all.