M. Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, spoke to Mr Paulo Rangel, Minister of State and Foreign Affairs of Portugal, in Paris today, Thursday 5 December.
The ministers celebrated the longstanding ties of friendship that unite our two nations, welcoming the very great closeness of our peoples and noting, inter alia, the importance given to French-language teaching in Portugal. They agreed to step up our cooperation further in many areas, including on safeguarding the oceans, with the approach of the Third UN Ocean Conference (UNOC3), which will take place in Nice in June 2025, and building on the previous conference in Lisbon in June 2022 (UNOC2).
Meeting a few days after the new European Commission took office, the ministers called for the strengthening of our industrial and technological sovereignty, in line with the Draghi report, and for the strengthening of European defence. They agreed on the importance of trade policy in better defending the interests of Europeans. They also stressed the importance of combating foreign interference, which seeks to weaken our democracies.
The two ministers discussed the need to reform the multilateral institutions, and in particular to bring new members into the United Nations Security Council. Finally, they emphasized that they share the same views about working to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.