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The president of Cape Verde, Jorge Carlos Fonseca, has argued that the country’s coming stint leading the Community of Portuguese-Language Countries (CPLP), which starts next week, has to lead to progress in the field of movement of people, even if it is a gradual process.
Cape Verde is to take over the revolving presidency of the CPLP for the first time, from the current holder, Brazil, at the organisation’s next summit – only its 12th ever – on 17 and 18 July on the island of Sal.
At a conference in Praia, the Cape Verde capital, late on Tuesday, Fonseca said that his country aims “to put the emphasis on a range of themes and questions, put a big stress on the question of freedom of movement, knowing beforehand that Cape Verde, which wants the maximum [freedom], is clear that one can’t have the maximum all at once and immediately.”
But the fact that Cape Verde is taking over the presidency for the first time, “has to translate in progress in the domain of movement, even if it is a clear movement, by segments,” he said.
Writers, artists, cultural agents and goods, economic agents, businesspeople and students are some of the segments where the Cape Verde president wants “clear advances and conquests”.
His country is aware, he added, that Cape Verde’s goals are not necessarily shared by all member states. In that context, what it is aiming for is “a declaration that is adjusted to the degrees to which each country signs up in relation to movement, so that each country can in each period sign up to more or less advanced proposals on movement.”
Cape Verde also wants during its presidency to “move ahead in the domain of economic and business cooperation, give emphasis to the economy of the sea … with the blue economy,” which relates to culture, technology and innovation.
Overall, he said, Cape Verde wants its stint to bring “a more dynamic CPLP [with] more movement of people, of economic agents, more emphasis on matters to do with the oceans, a concern with the spread of the Portuguese language, a more efficient solution for the IILP” – the International Portuguese Language Institute, which is based in Praia.
During the upcoming summit of heads of state and government, with the theme ‘Culture, People and Oceans’, Cape Verde is to formally take over the presidency for two years.
The other members of the CPLP are Angola, Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe, and East Timor.
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