The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) has ratified the mobility agreement by all member states, after Equatorial Guinea completed the process last week.
The permanent representative of Equatorial Guinea to the CPLP, Tito Mba Ada, was received by the Executive Secretary Zacarias da Costa, last week “to deposit the instrument of ratification by Equatorial Guinea of the ‘Agreement on Mobility among CPLP Member States’, signed on 17 July 2021, in Luanda.
“The conclusion of this agreement is not the final stage of the process, but the starting point for the creation of a significantly more favourable framework, the movement of people”, which should, the CPLP Executive Secretary declared, “be now implemented through the adaptation of domestic legislation and through the conclusion of a series of other complementary agreements.”
The parliaments of the nine member countries of the CPLP “will therefore be called upon again to give their indispensable contribution to the building of a CPLP which is undoubtedly a community of states and which also seeks to assert itself as a community of people,” he added.
Zacarias da Costa was speaking at the opening session of the XI Parliamentary Assembly of the CPLP.
The Mobility Agreement establishes a “cooperation framework” between all member states in a “flexible and variable” way and, in practice, covers any citizen.
States are provided with a range of solutions that allow them to make “commitments arising from mobility in a progressive manner and with different levels of integration”, taking into account their own internal specificities, in their political, social and administrative dimensions.
The CPLP includes Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and Timor-Leste.
On 30 October, the new regime for the entry of immigrants into Portugal came into force, which provides for the facilitation of the issuance of visas for CPLP citizens, within the scope of the Agreement on Mobility between Member States.
According to the decree, CPLP citizens can obtain a visa to look for work or a CPLP residence visa, being exempted from presenting valid travel insurance, proof of means of subsistence, copy of the return ticket and they are also exempted from appearing in person for visa application.
