Portugal and Spain sign eight new agreements at the Portuguese-Spanish conference

The Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa claimed that Portugal and Spain signed eight "equally important" agreements and expressed the common willingness to carry out joint work "for an increasingly closer, friendly and productive bilateral relation, for joint presence in the European Union and NATO".

In Trujillo (Cáceres), Spain, at the joint press conference with the Head of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, António Costa noted "three important landmarks": signing the new friendship and cooperation treaty, the treaty to enshrine the cross-border worker status, and the memorandum of understanding for joint work in four strategic areas of the Recovery and Resilience Facility.

The Prime Minister highlighted that the friendship and cooperation treaty "has a political and strategic dimension of major importance", as the previous one dated back to 1977. "This treaty modernizes the relations beyond the bilateral scale in new areas such as energy and digital transition and combines the strengthening of cooperation on a multilateral level – NATO and the EU, where Portugal and Spain have a unique role to play".

"In the NATO framework, the importance of facing the terrorist threat from the south, namely the Sahel region, in the European Union, the importance of helping to open up the territory to the world with an open trade policy, without delaying the agreement with Mercosul, Mexico and Chile, and strengthening the transatlantic alliance with Latin America", he added.

Enshrining the cross-border worker status

António Costa also highlighted the treaty signed to enshrine the cross-border worker status "is a good example of how this cooperation between Portugal and Spain is not rhetoric", after having approved in Guarda, Portugal, a common cross-border development strategy in 2020.

The Prime Minister added that this strategy has been fulfilled in developing interconnections and "was an important outcome in the day-to-day life of the border populations". "Not just in infrastructure, it is also a major contribution and a great example of how the strategy is being played out on the ground and which has to do with the daily life of Spanish and Portuguese citizens".

Joint work in the four strategic areas of the RRF

Portugal and Spain also signed a memorandum of understanding to work together towards developing the Recovery and Resilience Facilities in four strategic areas. "It is an outstanding opportunity for the structural transformation of our economies and change in societies", he claimed.

António Costa listed the four fields: car industry and transition to electric and connected mobility; environmental transition in the field of energy and particular green hydrogen; industry scale and space related activities; and capacity building for digital infrastructure with three projects of major significance – developing a research network in the field of artificial intelligence, articulating the different digital hubs to make the Iberian Peninsula a major innovation platform for the development of common projects in the field of digitalization and Public Administration.