José Sena Goulão / Lusa
To happen, “it will not be the first or last time,” but it is still early to make a decision, says prime minister.
The Prime Minister Luís Montenegro This Wednesday admitted the possibility of Portugal to send Portuguese military to Ukraine as part of a peace process “with security guarantees”, but stressed that it is still early to make this decision.
“We are not yet in the time of defining and deciding on concrete. It is early to be today making a decision About whether or not we will have the military of our Armed Forces in a hypothetical theater of operations in Ukraine, ”said Luís Montenegro to the PS in Parliament during the preparatory debate of the European Council.
The Prime Minister said that if there is “a peace process, with security guarantees, It will not be the first or the last time ” that Portuguese Armed Forces will make their contribution in this context.
“As they contribute today to ensure peacekeeping, the safeguarding of dissuasive operations,” he said, giving as an example the presence of Portuguese military in Missions in Romania, Slovakia or Lithuania.
Europe has three challenges, says Montenegro
The Prime Minister also argued that “ Europe has to be fast ” And answer “with policies that promote cohesive growth of all their space, so that they can affirm themselves in the international context as a competitive commercial block, with productive capacity, capable of omber with other commercial blocks in market conquest”.
For this purpose, Montenegro pointed out Three challengesstarting with the simplification.
“We need an economy, a relationship between citizens, companies and less complex administration and, by this, more inducer of transforming capacity. We can not omive in the international market with other geographies where demands and complexity are smaller and, by this, production processes are more agile and make productive capacity more efficient,” he said.
As the second priority pointed out the energy areaconsidering that Europe “cannot complain about having little autonomy and an energy cost that is four, five times higher than other commercial blocks, in particular the American, and do nothing about it.”
“It seems that everything is still in the same and we can’t explore the productive capacity we have within us,” he said, stressing that it is a problem that especially affects the Iberian peninsula.
Finally, the Prime Minister defended the union of savings, banking union and financial union “As a butmsticks of a financing capacity” from the European Union.
“We cannot watch, impaired and serene, to which European savings help economic dynamism, for example, from the United States, rather than helping the financing of small and medium -sized European companies to be more competitive,” he warned.
Europe does not have “a possibility of affirmation that is not like a bloc”, at the political, economic level, and in the areas of security and defense, he stressed.
Trump: “Very good” conversation with Zelenskyy
This Wednesday, Donald Trump spoke on the phone with the Ukrainian President About his call on Tuesday with Vladimir Putin, in which the Russian President accepted a 30 day, however, demanding the end of European military aid to Ukraine.
According to the US president, the conversation of about an hour with Volodymyr Zelenskyy was “Very good” And it served to “align Kiev and Moscow’s demands and needs” about a ceasefire in the conflict.
Luís Montenegro considered this first sign of “positive” ceasefire, although not “the desirable situation”. Already the President of the Republic manifested himself dissatisfied with the limited truce.
“What Portugal has argued is that the welcome ceasefire should not be an illusion, it must be an opportunity to build a decent, fair, lasting peace. We have not known that it is not yet a first step towards solving the problem and the creation of conditions for just, dignified and lasting peace.
