 Good afternoon everyone, my name is Barry Colfer and I'm the director of research at the IIA and I'm really pleased to welcome you to this afternoon's webinar. We're really delighted to be joined today by Zacharias de Costa, Executive Secretary of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, who's been generous enough to take his time out of his schedule to speak to us about this important organization. Executive Secretary de Costa will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so, and then we'll go to Q&A with our audience. You'll be able to join the discussion as ever using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screens. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you, and we'll come to as many questions as we can once Executive Secretary de Costa has finished his presentation. A reminder that today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record. Please feel free as ever to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIA. Zacharias de Costa and East Timorese diplomat and politician was elected Executive Secretary for the biennium of 2021 to 2023 by the 13th CPLP Conference of Heads of State and Government held in Luanda and Gola on July 17, 2021. He's the first East Timorese person to hold this office. Prior to this, Mr. de Costa served as the Minister for Foreign Affairs to the Democratic Republic of Timorese amongst others. Very good afternoon to all of you, either in Ireland or Portugal elsewhere in the world. And of course, let me start by thanking the Director General David O'Sullivan, the team of IIA in Ireland for inviting me to participate in this webinar promoted by Institute of International European Affairs. I'd also like to thank Ambassador Ralph Victory, the permanent representative of the Republic of Ireland to the CPLP and Ambassador to Portugal, whose work in Lisbon has been fundamental to strengthen the existing cooperation between the CPLP and Ireland. It is truly a great honor to have the opportunity to present the CPLP to such an illustrious and diverse audience. Allow me to begin by introducing some ideas which I believe best characterize our community of Portuguese speaking countries. I would start by saying that the CPLP is a natural and desirable result of a centralist historical bond that links its member states in a very profound way at the roots of this deep connection. It's a common language, Portuguese, an expanding language which permanently renews and updates this historical bond. This common language does not only unite our member states, it goes much further uniting our citizens, including the numerous diasporas that go far beyond the borders of our countries, as is the case by the way right there in Ireland. In this sense, the language we share is our common border, which, like the seas, like the ocean, brings together our countries, which are geographically dispersed over four continents. It is only natural that, united by this historical bond and by the language, they choose to use an official language, these nine countries, namely Vola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé, Príncipe and Timor-Leste would come together to defend their shared interests and common objectives. Ladies and gentlemen, our international organization is therefore in itself a space for multilateral consultation, which projects our member states as a cohesive group, as a united political space, or as, if you prefer, as a gel linguistic space. The second aspect that I would like to highlight is that although it is the result of an historical bond, the CPLP is not the past, does not belong to the past, it is the future. In 1996 gave this historic link a new shape in a new time. The creation of the CPLP overcame old negative historical paradigms and opened a path towards the future based on a model of sovereign equality of its members, which converge around values such as the primacy of peace, democracy and rule of law. The CPLP came to anchor the enormous potential for cooperation between Portuguese speaking countries in a functional structure, equipped with bodies, norms, mechanisms and human financial and material resources with the aim of contributing to the development in those that are its three pillars of action, political diplomatic consultation, cooperation in all fields, and the promotion and expansion of Portuguese language. The third idea I would like to highlight is that over the past 26 years the CPLP has been expanding and simultaneously deepening its action. Let's look at the enlargement first. We extended our organization to new members. First, we historically delayed a long awaited arrival of Timor-Laster, my country, the Portuguese speaking family, which happened in 2002, immediately after the restoration of independence, after the transitional restoration of the United Nations. And then later at the Dili Summit in 2014, with the accession of Equatorial Guinea, a country that had the status of Associated Observer since 2006. And we have also expanded our action. We extended to new sectors of cooperation that were not initially foreseen. For example, to name just a few, defense, food security, energy, electronic governance, and now more recently economic cooperation. We have also expanded our partnerships, creating an extensive network of collaboration with international, regional, and UN agencies. We expanded the thematic networks for sharing knowledge and good practices, which currently number more than 50, covering the most diverse areas of cooperation in which we work. Ladies and gentlemen, as mentioned, our organization has also deepened its action, and I would like to highlight two main aspects. We have deepened our organizational structure, which we consolidated through different statutory provisions. We integrated the International Institute of Portuguese Language, whose creation predates the CPLB itself, integrated inter-parliamentary cooperation through the parliamentary assembly. We formalized the sectoral ministerial meetings as bodies and created a meeting of cooperation, focal points where the directors responsible for development cooperation sit. And we have deepened our action sector in which we already worked and created more efficient instruments, such as sectoral strategic plans, operationalized short term action plans and align such plans with the 2030 agenda and the sustainable development goals. On the other hand, we have been increasingly promoting political diplomatic consultation, either immobilize the support for the candidacy of member states or outstanding outstanding personalities for international positions within the framework of other organizations, such as the United Nations. Either in aligning positions and matters on international agenda as the case with the Global Conference on Combating Child Labor, the World Water Forum, and more recently with the National Coalition for Promotion of Sustainable Territorial Food Systems, which I will be referring to later. We monitor a crisis situation in the general context of the member states and promote electoral observation missions. As for the Portuguese language, let me quickly also go through it saying that the CPLB has contributed in a very significant way to the promotion of the Portuguese language to the reinforcement of the weight of the Portuguese language in the world. Unfortunately, the CPLB has increased the global outreach of the Portuguese language. This means that the interest in Portuguese no longer steams those terms on the sole fact that it's a language of heritage, but rather from its ability to assert itself itself as a foreign language, business, diplomacy, literature and creative industries of tourism, of diasporas, and of course it is now the language of scientific knowledge of academic mobility, language of new technologies, digital space and social networks, aspects that give it a measurable economic value with great potential for growth. I would like to talk now about the challenges of the future. As I said before the CPLB is now 26 years old, a quarter of a century makes the CPLB a young organization still, especially when compared to similar organizations, such as the Commonwealth founded in 1949, or the OIF founded in 1970. Even so, and thanks to the work it carried out and the performance of its member states, the CPLB gained notoriety on the international scene as the number of associated observers so clearly demonstrates. Speaking about associate observers, let me just mention that currently the number rises to 32 of which 28 countries and four international organizations at 2014 and 2016 summits in the CPLB welcome eight new observers. And most recently in 2021 at the Wanda Summit, as has been also mentioned, we welcome 13 new partners, including Ireland, along with countries like the United States of America, Canada, India, among many others. These increase demonstrates that the CPLB has been projecting itself as a relevant actor in foreign policy and has been perceived as a platform for diplomatic consultation as the as a platform for business or cultural and linguistic cooperation as well. Now, of the immediate challenges that I identify lies precisely in the way we can take greater advantage of this privileged relationship that we have established with these 32 associated observers and with future candidates. And how can associate observers contribute to the CPLB and vice versa, and how can we strengthen our cooperation with this partners. It is for this purpose that we are reviewing the revelation regarding its observer status that is, we intend to establish a cooperation roadmap based on concrete actions on matters of common interest registered and aligned with the organization's action strategy. We're also currently receiving a lot of expression of interest. I just mentioned, in this case to Australia and Wanda, which has already been formalized. But certainly we are not considering the applications until the completion of the review of the regulation, the review, the relation review process which I have mentioned before. And we hope will occur until the next summit in July 23 in Santa May implicitly. Let me also briefly mention also an economic cooperation objective. Another challenge faced by the CPLB in the short term concern concerns the promotion of a facilitated framework for economic and business cooperation, namely through the international internationalization of companies, the mutual protection of investments and the increase in trade. And after the Wanda summit where a resolution on the creation of new general economic cooperation objective was approved. And this resolution contemplates the possibility of the sector becoming part of the organization's statutes. I would like to say that we have advanced in concrete initiatives. A joint first joint tripartite meeting of the ministers of economy trade and commerce. At this, this first joint meeting we approve the strategic agenda for the consolidation of economic cooperation. And this includes seven priority access with emphasis on trade promotion, invest investment promotion, institutional business training, improving financial mechanisms, among others. At the same time, the forum for foreign trade and investment promotion agencies of the CPLP was created with the aim of promoting the exchange of practices training initiatives and institutional capacity building, as well as joint actions in matters, such as the internationalization of companies, increasing trade and invest and investment in the strategic sectors. The part of the economic cooperation objective, it is, oh, is the need to respond to the challenges of the post COVID economic recovery, and to the new demands of the global market. In the CPLP will be more fruitful. The more it is extended, it should include the public authorities and institutions of the member states, and the action of partners from the private sector and civil society, including the associated observers and the consultative consultative observers of the CPLP. In the first phase of this strategic agenda, it advocates above all actions aimed at consolidating inter CPLP economic cooperation. Namely, with the view of institutional capacity building and monetization of practices and the creation for revitalization of the network of public institutions with responsibilities at the foreign trade and investment financing industry property quality and competition. Let me also briefly mention another important chapter, which is the mobility agreement, another challenge that is presented to us and I'd like to mention this today is naturally to is to bring the CPLP more closer to the citizens. That represents there are countless and multiple ties that unite our citizens across the geographic space of the Portuguese language. So the mobility of people is a corollary of these ties, and the strong factor of cohesion, which contributes to the sense of belonging to a space that we want to be increasingly shared and experienced by wall. In the last year in the Luanda summit member states have signed a mobility agreement within the CPLP. The agreement has since been ratified by all member states with remarkable speed. This mobility agreement is a framework agreement which shall now be complemented in additional partnership partnerships among member states. In other words, member states are now free to choose which modalities they will applying, for example, short stay in CPLP temporary stay residence visa visa exemption, etc. And they are also free to define who will be the beneficiaries covered, for example, state agents, teachers, students, entrepreneurs, cultural agents among others. On the other hand, I would also like to emphasize that the agreement recognize safeguards international commitments in terms of ability that the CPLP CPLP member states have assumed within the framework of their respective regional integration As I mentioned that being in four continents we belong to different regional spaces of integration, mainly, a CDO, CAC, SADEC, ASEAN, of course, not to mention European and the Mercosur as well. I would also like to mention before I conclude on the promotion of Portuguese language that we have many challenges regarding our future action in promoting the Portuguese language, we need to strengthen the means for its promotion and expansion, both at the inter CPLP and external levels, and we count on the important contribution of the associated observers in this regard. But also important to say that internally you had projections point to a doubling of Portuguese speakers by the end of this century, mainly thanks to the demographic growth in Angola and Mozambique. By the end of this century and estimated at 500 millions people will be speaking Portuguese and this is also in economic terms a huge market to explore. And as I said this growth will only have a real impact if the widespread use of Portuguese by the population and of course by the diaspora elsewhere is truly ensured. And externally UNESCO's Declaration of Fifth of May as the World Portuguese Language Day represents also a recognition of the growing importance of the Portuguese language, which is currently the most widely spoken language in the southern sphere. Thanks to Brazil it is among the fourth or the fifth most spoken to work, and it is one of the fastest growing on the internet. Also, it is an official work and or working language in 32 international organizations. We are interested in marking this date, the fifth of May in partnership with associate observers through joint initiatives which will allow the expansion, the dissemination of the Portuguese language, the culture of CPLP countries, and reach not only the citizens of the associated countries but also the Portuguese speaking diasporas residing everywhere and I know that according to the last census. There are more than 20,000 Portuguese speaking in Ireland but I'm sure that today there is more than this number, since the mobility within the EU is also one of the main issues. Here I think I'm almost at the end and let me conclude, or I should say I cannot conclude this presentation without first underline the importance of Ireland in the CPLP, and its status of as associated observer of the CPLP. In addition to the Portuguese speakers living in Ireland, the fundamental principles and values shared with the member states of the CPLP and with this organization are namely freedom democracy and human rights serve and will serve as a foundation in the future, future journey of realization of the objectives of the CPLP, the community of the Portuguese speaking countries. There is great potential for actions to be developed on this journey. Certainly the areas which we are currently working together with Ireland since Ireland has acceded to the status of associated observer last year. We have been in such a short term period since Ireland got this status we have already been working hard with Ambassador here in Lisbon to and we, I think we progress in some areas where we are going to further we're going to reinforce this partnership. So we have looked at the concrete areas of joint partnership, and I think that soon we will be able to agree on one or two areas which will start our work on this. So ladies and gentlemen, Ambassador I do thank you for your kind attention and I appreciate the invitation to be a panelist in this session, and I'm now looking forward to any questions you may have. I thank you very much.