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Honourable President

I firstly want to thank you, and also in my wife’s name and in that of all my retinue, for your kind invitation to this luncheon, as well as for the words you have just proffered. Allow me, Mr. President, also to thank your wife, Mrs. Sonsoles Espinosa, to have wanted to honour us with her presence on this occasion.

I share with Your Excellency the assessment you make on our bilateral relationship and the hope for an even narrower cooperation between our two countries.

The Portuguese-Spanish Summits have allowed for a framework of dialogue, cooperation and agreement which embraces multiple sectors of governance. Our bilateral relationship is characterized today by a great degree of interdependence. As I have been saying, “nothing that happens in Spain is irrelevant for Portugal and nothing that happens in Portugal is irrelevant for Spain”.

Economically, Spain is our main partner. It exports to Portugal more than it does to Asia, Latin America, North America, or jointly to the new members of the European Union. In accordance with a recent survey of the Portuguese-Spanish Chamber of Commerce and Industry, there are in Portugal approximately 1050 Spanish owned enterprises, which annually invoice more than 13 billion euros.

In the field of investment, Spain has topped foreign investment in Portugal in recent years, and Portugal is amongst the greatest investors in Spain. I will have the opportunity, moreover, to visit Hidrocantabrico in Asturias, an enterprise which represents the largest Portuguese investment in this country.

Culturally, our relationship was never so intense. Spanish has never been taught and spoken as much in Portugal, neither has Portuguese in Spain, and never were so many literary works translated. In European terms, Spain is by far the preferred destination of the Portuguese who are beneficiaries of the Erasmus and Leonardo da Vinci programmes.

I am also pleased to note the level of cooperation in our border areas, which greatly contributes to a sustained development in those regions. It is a fundamental route for relations between neighbours.

Also in the fields of science and technology, which are so important for us to surpass the challenges of the global market, Portugal and Spain have considerably strengthened their cooperation. The results of the 2005 Portuguese-Spanish Summit allow us to envision new partnerships: the joint setting up and operation of a Research Institute, with headquarters in Braga, to be shortly implemented, will be a particularly emblematic example.

In short, we have a basis of relationship which allows us to be ambitious in terms of the future.

The potential is enormous. In a global world and in the face of an integration project as demanding as the European Union, our two countries can only gain if they explore the synergies resulting from common projects.

Facing the future implies answering the challenge of global competitiveness. And to defeat this challenge much depends upon the qualification of our human resources, technological development, scientific research and capacity for innovation.

To take advantage of the opportunities offered by the programmes of the European Union and promote the mobility of University students, to set up partnerships between scientific institutions and technologically based enterprises, so that these result in economic and social values, must be considered as priorities in the relations between our two countries.

I tried that my retinue would reflect my conviction of the importance of narrowing our ties in the areas of scientific and technological research and innovation. I brought with me young scientists and entrepreneurs who are examples of the excellence of the work which, in these fields, is being developed in Portugal.

To defeat the challenge of the “Lisbon Agenda” implies an immense, but necessary effort from our two countries. The action impelled by the two Governments is fundamental, but it is not enough. It is necessary to increase more and more the involvement of the civil society and of the entrepreneurial sector.

Honourable President

I have already referred the need to promote cooperation that will allow us to make good our interests in the European Union. The agreement in posturing, whenever common interests are concerned, should continue to be a perquisite of the relationship between our countries.

Our countries’ integration in the European Union is a success story. However true it may be that much of our economic and social development is owed to European integration, it must also be underlined that the European Union greatly benefited from the adhesion of Spain and Portugal, as I had the opportunity to point out in my speech last night.

The European Union must be up to the mark of the legitimate expectations it generated with the European citizens. The Europeans ask for European solutions for the problems that afflict them, such as insecurity and unemployment.

The same can be said as to illegal immigration. This is an issue that requires a European answer. An answer which lies in border controls, but also, as Spain and Portugal have been reminding, that reaches the core of the problem: the economic and social development of the countries from which these masses of the disinherited originate. I must recall the importance, in this context, of the Euro-African dialogue and of the II European Union-African Summit which takes place during the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

At less than one year from the third Portuguese Presidency of the European Union, I am certain that we will find, in Spain, a partner and an ally in the defence of European interests, particularly in the promotion of an open and equitable Europe, nearer to its citizens and better able to answer their anxieties.

Thank you very much