António Costa will meet in Malta with nine heads of state for the M9 summit. The program begins with a debate on the European Union’s neighborhood with the southern neighborhood and Africa.
The Prime Minister will travel to Malta, on the 29th, to participate in the 10th Summit of the Southern Countries of the European Union (MED9), a meeting that brings together heads of State and Government from nine Member States.
They are part of this group of Mediterranean and southern European countries, in addition to Portugal, Malta, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia and Croatia.
According to a statement released this Thursday by the Prime Minister’s office in Valletta, the program begins with a session dedicated to the Mediterranean and the relations of the European Union with the southern neighborhood and Africa. “The preparation for the October meetings of the informal European Council, taking place in Grenada, and the European Council (in Brussels), will be highlighted in the second session” of MED9, the statement said.
According to António Costa’s office, this summit will conclude with a working dinner, “during which the Heads of State and Government will discuss the main priorities of the next European institutional cyclewithin the framework of the preparation of the next Strategic Agenda of the European Union (2024-2029)”.
The last MED summit took place in December in Alicante, Spain, and was dedicated to Europe’s “strategic autonomy,” “with a focus on energy.”
After this summit, António Costa declared in parliament that the energy interconnections project that the Portuguese Government will present to obtain European financing “has the branch that will connect Figueira da Foz with Celorico da Beira, from Celorico da Beira to the border with Spain.”
“As for what it will cost, it will be around 360 million euros, 50% of which can be financed through the European facility mechanism,” he stated. The President of the Government added in the same parliamentary debate that, in the field of these energy connections, Spain will present a project to “connect the border with Zamora, and then the complementary section from Barcelona to Marseille.”
In Alicante, the “economic governance” of the European Union was also discussed, that is, issues related to the review of community budget rules.
Source: Observadora
