The ceremony, aimed mainly at European Council officials, will take place next Friday afternoon at the headquarters building in Brussels, as announced by a European source.
The elected president of the European Council, António Costa, will officially take This Friday, the takeover of the leadership of the institution was announced at a testimony delivery ceremony for the current leader, Charles Michel, next Friday in Brussels.
Aimed primarily at employees of the European Council, the institution made up of the heads of Government and State of the European Union (EU) and which defines the community’s political guidelines and priorities, the ceremony will take place on Friday afternoon in the building of the headquarters, in Brussels. , a European source told the Lusa agency on Friday.
On that occasion, the outgoing President of the European Council, Charles Michel, will pass testimony of António Costa, the first Portuguese and the first socialist to head the institution, whose two-and-a-half-year term officially begins on December 1, 2024.
Speeches by both are planned.
As for the rest of the participants in the ceremony, the presence of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is also expected. with whom António Costa maintains a good relationshipunlike what happened with Charles Michel, with whom several conflicts were reported in his five years in office.
Community sources heard by Lusa indicated that they expected a better institutional relationship between the European Council and the European Commission in this new institutional cycle of the EU that is now beginning. The same is expected with the European Parliament, headed by Roberta Metsola.
Especially because, according to the same sources, Ursula von der Leyen, who will begin her second five-year term at the head of the community executive on December 1, He knows António Costa well since he was head of Governmentspecifically during the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the EU, in the first half of 2021, when both became closer.
This Friday, the president-elect of the European Council promised, in statements to the international press in Brussels, “unity among all” EU leaders when he leads the institution, arguing that “time should not be wasted” with conclusions written in the high-level meetings, which must first transmit “political messages.”
Two weeks ago, the outgoing President of the European Council, Charles Michel, He said he trusts that the former Portuguese prime minister will be the “guardian of unity” between member states when the EU faces economic and geopolitical challenges.
António Costa, who served on the European Council representing Portugal for eight years (during which he was Prime Minister), you already know some of the EU leaders, but he intends, in his two and a half years of mandate at the head of the institution, to find points of convergence for commitments among the 27.
For this reason, Before beginning his duties, he worked in the summer and early fall. a tour of European capitals to meet personally with the heads of government and state of the EU to learn more about their perspectives and priorities for the next institutional cycle in the community space.
He succeeds the Belgian Charles Michel, in office since 2019 and who ends his term on November 30, 2024, in a period marked due to crises such as the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, more recently, the renewed tensions in the Middle East.
Source: Observadora
