CPLP: Cabinet meeting approves proposal for free movement of people in community

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

CPLP: Cabinet meeting approves proposal for free movement of people in community

9:12 CAT | 26 Mar 2021

Image: Lusa

The Council of Ministers of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) on Friday, at an extraordinary meeting chaired by Cabo Verde, approved the proposal for the free movement of persons in the Lusophone area, to be taken to the summit in Luanda.

“We have reached a solution of variable geometry, which allows all member states the best solutions in the framework of mobility,” announced the Cape Verdian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the country that holds the rotating presidency of the community, Rui Figueiredo Soares.

🎥
Sessão de Abertura da XV Reunião Extraordinária do Conselho de Ministros https://t.co/q1j1rBhUFC via @YouTube #CPLP #Mobilidade #ConselhodeMinistros #Angola #Brasil #CaboVerde #GuinéBissau #GuinéEquatorial #Moçambique #Portugal #SãoToméePríncipe #TimorLeste

— CPLP (@_CPLP) March 26, 2021

The minister presided, from Praia, over this 15th extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers of the CPLP (which brings together the ministers of Foreign Affairs of the member states), held in videoconference format, due to the pandemic.

With the approval of this draft agreement on mobility in the CPLP, he said, it will be possible to “transform a community of countries into a community of people in which citizens can feel integrated.

He admitted that this “was not an easy consensus” and that it was not possible to “make an agreement that would be the same for all countries,” so the solution is to understand “various levels of mobility” and “different speeds.

This is a general convention that, after being ratified at the next summit, will still need regulation by each country, depending on the legal frameworks of the various states, their “constitutional provisions” he said.

“We cannot make a general prognosis here as to when each of the member states will complete the formalities and the agreement can come into force”. Parliaments of each country will still be called on to ratify the agreement, after it has been approved by the CPLP heads of state and government.

However, he admitted that in the case of Cabo Verde it would be possible to approve the agreement definitively in October, immediately after the parliamentary holidays in August and September.

O Conselho de Ministros da #CPLP aprovou hoje texto final do Acordo p/ promover maior #mobilidade de pessoas no âmbito da Comunidade. A assinatura do documento está prevista p/ julho, em Luanda. Os Ministros também partilharam informações sobre a pandemia Covid-19.#concertacao pic.twitter.com/Psxttjgei2

— Missão do Brasil junto à CPLP (@BrasilCPLP) March 26, 2021

At the public session to open the meeting, the organisation’s executive secretary, Portuguese ambassador Francisco Ribeiro Telles, stressed that the expected approval of the agreement represents “a turning of the page in the CPLP.

“And the point at which we have found ourselves in this negotiating process, which will culminate in Luanda, is a guarantee that we will approve an ambitious, innovative, feasible text, which will allow us to realise the mobility plan that has been in place since the Brasilia agreements of 2002,” he said.

Approval of the agreement also represents the high point of Cape Verde’s leadership of the CPLP – which was extended for a year due to limitations in 2020 with the pandemic -, and the document will also have to be ratified at the 13th Conference of Heads of State and Government, scheduled for July in Luanda, which will mark the transition of the organisation’s presidency to Angola.

“This agreement I think is the most valuable legacy that the excellent Cape Verdean presidency will leave to the CPLP,” said Ribeiro Telles.

The CPLP has nine member states: Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and East Timor.

Source: Lusa