The Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, on Friday highlighted the dynamics of economic exchanges between Portugal and Morocco, stressing that the two countries are called upon "to take advantage of their complementarity."
"We have greatly accelerated economic exchanges. Morocco is now one of the top five customers of Portugal outside the European Union," said Santos Silva in an interview with the Portuguese public radio Renascença, on the sidelines of his participation in the EU-AU Summit held in Brussels.
"We also have a complementarity that we must take advantage of," he added, saying that "an example of this cooperation is the agreement on labor mobility that we signed this year with Morocco."
"The agreement we have reached with Morocco allows Portuguese companies to benefit from Moroccan workers who will enjoy exactly the same rights as Portuguese workers in an organized manner between the employment services of both countries and in a safe and orderly manner," he explained.
He praised, in this sense, "the existence of agreements for regular, safe, orderly and legal flows of human mobility, as the best alternative we have" in migration management.
The head of Portuguese diplomacy stressed the advantages of such agreements. "We are talking about regular, legal and safe movement and not about boats drifting in the Atlantic or the Mediterranean," he said.
In this interview, the Portuguese minister also highlighted the potential for cooperation between his country and Morocco in energy transition. "We have a potential for cooperation with Morocco that we put to good use," he stressed.
