According to Ambassador Eurico Monteiro, the VI Joint Technical Meeting on Mobility in the CPLP, which began on Wednesday by video conference and had a scheduled duration of three days, ended this Thursday at the end of the morning, "with the consensus of all States" on the final text of the mobility proposal that should be approved at the next extraordinary Council of Ministers, to be held in late March, but still without a set date.
At stake were three points of divergence between the Portuguese-speaking countries.
Two of the issues - the certification of academic and professional associations and citizens' contributions to Social Security - will be determined by the internal regulations of the States.
In relation to the fees and emoluments of the mobility titles, the member-states decided, by consensus, to define a "maximum ceiling", said the Cape Verdean diplomat.
"We could have had a solution, which was to say: 'we do not regulate these matters and each state regulates as it sees fit. But we don't want to leave it like this and we want to make an effort to achieve what is possible", had said, in previous statements to Lusa, Eurico Monteiro.
In relation to the mobility titles, or visas, in the multilateral instruments the rule of elimination of fees was approved, that is, these documents should be free of charge, only the cost of the form can be charged. However, some member states, "with some financial difficulties", expressed reluctance to give up these fees.
The consensus reached was to set a maximum value.
As for academic titles, the problem was that, in some cases, the competences for their attribution lay with professional organizations and not with governments or legislative bodies.
The diplomat pointed out as an example Brazil, where professional certifications are the responsibility of professional associations, which even have a "constitutional seat".
"There is a disparity of internal legal systems and we have to find a conforming norm. Because we would like the mobility of citizens to correspond to the mobility of academic titles, in order to have greater effectiveness", he commented.
In relation to Social Security, the diplomat pointed to the example of someone who lives in Angola, where he pays contributions to Social Security and then moves to live in Portugal.
"Good mobility says that you should not start over, losing what you already had," stressed the Cape Verdean diplomat.
But in order for this citizen not to lose what he/she has discounted so far, it is necessary to create "an exportability scheme for these Social Security credits," he underlined.
Besides this, it is necessary that the entities of the country where he lived and the one where he is going to live understand each other, in order to understand how the pension is going to be in the future, which references to follow and how the calculation is going to be done. "It is a matter of some complexity," he concluded.
In the last Council of Foreign Affairs Ministers (MNE) of the CPLP, which also took place in virtual format on December 9, a draft resolution on the mobility agreement was approved, whose final agreement will be approved at the summit of heads of state and government of the CPLP, scheduled for Luanda this year.
The CPLP has nine member states, Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor.