The Diplomat
The State Secretary for the European Union, Fernando Sampedro, will meet with his French and Portuguese counterparts this Thursday in Bilbao, in the so-called “Trilateral” format. The meeting will jointly address the main issues on the European agenda and seek coordination of positions on issues of mutual interest, with a view to their joint defense within the framework of the European Union.
Joining the Spanish State Secretary for the EU in Bilbao will be his Portuguese counterpart, Inês Domingos, and the French Minister Delegate for Europe, Benjamin Haddad, according to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Representatives from the three countries will address the issues on the European agenda in two groups. The first part of the meeting will be devoted to more economic topics, including boosting European competitiveness, regional development—particularly the situation of the nine regions with European outermost status, including the Canary Islands—the next multiannual financial framework, financing European security and defense, and multilateralism and the oceans, including the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (to be held in Seville) and the UN Ocean Conference (to be held in Nice), with special mention of the automatic renewal of the European Union’s fisheries agreements.
The second part of the meeting will focus on three topics with an external dimension for the European Union: migration, EU enlargement and reforms, and the Union’s own external relations, particularly with the Southern Neighborhood, Latin America and the Caribbean, the transatlantic nexus, and the African continent, with the aim of further advancing relations with our like-minded partners.
“Atlantic Macroregional Strategy”
Before the start of the working session, the two State Secretaries and the Minister Delegate will have had the opportunity to attend a presentation of the Atlantic Macroregional Strategy project at the Guggenheim Museum. This project is organized by the Basque Government, which holds the presidency of the Atlantic Arc Commission of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions.
The presentation will propose the creation of a European strategy for the Atlantic macroregion, with the aim of promoting initiatives and projects that contribute to the harmonious development of the Atlantic region.
