The Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, pointed to Brexit, the improvement of economic relations between Brussels and Washington and the macroeconomic environment as positive aspects with a positive impact in Portugal and the European Union throughout this year. The minister was the guest speaker at a lunch-debate held this Friday by the International Club of Portugal.
“We achieved a cycle of economic growth that not only allowed us to rise consistently in the euro zone average, but also allowed us to use different accelerators of the economy both from the point of view of domestic demand and from the point of view of investment and exports”, he said in beginning of his intervention. In addition to economic growth, Augusto Santos Silva stressed the importance of Portugal having overcome the years of the crisis without experiencing a political crisis.
Santos Silva also has a positive outlook on international relations, especially with the United States. “We have experienced in recent years a series of mistakes in our relationship between Europeans and Americans,” he explained. “Nowadays I think that the two partners [União Europeia e Estados Unidos] they are more aware of the importance of reaching an agreement quickly that, at least, allows to stop the escalation from a commercial point of view and manage to reach agreements in the commercial domain ”, he added. The Foreign Minister said that he expected an “agreement between the European Union and the United States”.
On the other hand, Brexit was presented as another opportunity, taking into account that the “commercial agreement must be the expected one of zero shares and zero tariffs”. He also recalled the importance of the United Kingdom having a way out with an agreement, “whatever the cost”.
The Portuguese language was another factor mentioned by Augusto Santos Silva, with the minister ensuring that Portuguese is “a South American language and does not end this century without being an African language”. It also established a relationship between economic value and the Portuguese language. In 2017, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had stated that the Portuguese language was worth 17% of the Gross Domestic Product.
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