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France on Wednesday announced that it had officially submitted its application to be recognised as an Associate Observer to the Community of Portuguese-Language Countries (CPLP), a nine-member organisation whose headquarters is in Lisbon.
In a statement issued by France’s embassy in the Portuguese capital, the letter from the country’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, formalising the application, and a plan of activities and plan of action to promote the teaching of Portuguese in France, to support it, were handed by the ambassador, Jean-Michel Casa, to the CPLP’s executive secretary, Maria do Carmo Silveira, on 27 April.
France is seeking observer status in part because of the existence of a large community of Portuguese nationals and descendants of Portuguese in the country – estimated at about one-and-a-half million, the largest outside Portugal – as well as the fact that France’s longest shared border (in French Guyana) is with Brazil, and the importance of relations with African countries that are members of CPLP, the statement said.
The application is to be analysed during the conference of CPLP heads of state and government that is to take place on 17 and 18 July on the island of Sal in Cape Verde.
The CPLP established the categories of associate observer and consultative observer in 2005, at a meeting of CPLP foreign ministers in Luanda.
At present 10 countries have associate observer: Georgia, Hungary, Japan, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Mauritius, Namibia, Senegal, Turkey and Uruguay. Italy and Andorra submitted formal applications in January this year.
The CPLP’s member states are Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe and East Timor.
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