President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Prime Minister António Costa will be together this Friday at the opening of the 28th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government in Santo Domingo.
The head of state has been in the capital of the Dominican Republic since Wednesday evening, where he made a one-day official visit on Thursday, accompanied by Foreign Minister Joao Gomes Cravinho.
The Prime Minister travels this Friday to Santo Domingo from Brussels.
The opening ceremony of the 28th Ibero-American Summit, whose motto is “Together for a just and sustainable Ibero-America”, is scheduled for 19:00 local time (23:00 in mainland Portugal).
Earlier, the President of the Republic will speak at the closing of the Ibero-American business meeting.
The summit in Santo Domingo will be the first fully face-to-face format since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, leading to the previous meeting scheduled for 2020 in Andorra, which will only take place in 2021, with a hybrid format.
Meetings with speeches by heads of state and government, at which Marcelo Rebelo de Souza and António Costa will speak, will take place on Saturday.
The Ibero-American community consists of 22 countries, of which three are European, Portugal, Spain and Andorra, and 19 are Latin American: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
The first summit of this community was held in 1991 in Guadalajara, Mexico. Meetings of heads of state and government were held annually until 2014. Since then they have been held every two years.
As a rule, Portugal is jointly represented at Ibero-American summits by heads of state and government.
Prime Minister António Costa and President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa were together and both made their debut at these meetings in October 2016 at the summit in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.
In November 2018, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa attended the 26th Ibero-American Summit in the historic city of Antigua, Guatemala.
In April 2021, the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister attended the 27th Ibero-American Summit in Andorra la Vella, Andorra marked by the covid-19 pandemic.