The Prime Minister meets today in New York with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, attends meetings on oceans and climate at the UN, and will hold bilateral meetings with the Presidents of Angola and Timor.
Luís Montenegro is today in New York for the second of three days of an official visit to the United States to participate in the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), in which he will speak on Thursday.
Today, the agenda of the Portuguese Prime Minister begins with participation in the Summit of the Crimea Platform International at 09:00 (14:00 in Lisbon), followed by the meeting with the United Nations Secretary-General, the Portuguese António Guterres, which will conclude in December after two consecutive five-year terms leading the organization.
Guterres opened on Tuesday morning, for the last time, the annual debate of the UN General Assembly, even before the Portuguese prime minister landed in New York.
“In the year in which the current UN Secretary-General will complete his second and final term, Luís Montenegro made it a point that his first commitment on the 23rd would be a meeting with António Guterres, to whom the prime minister will express his gratitude for his constant commitment to defending the UN Charter and multilateralism,” said to Lusa a source from the Prime Minister’s Office of the PSD/CDS-PP.
After this meeting, Luís Montenegro participates in the launch of the Ocean Eye platform, and is expected to be the first head of government to intervene in this new European project aimed at strengthening ocean observation and improving access to marine data essential for science, the economy, and environmental protection, chaired by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and by the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney.
The Portuguese prime minister’s agenda also includes several bilateral meetings, including with the Presidents of the Republic of Angola, João Lourenço, and of Timor-Leste, José Ramos-Horta.
Montenegro will intervene, in the afternoon, in the initiative promoted by the UN Secretary-General on Climate Action and a Just Transition, known as the Climate Summit.
On Thursday, the last day of the trip by the leader of the PSD/CDS-PP government, Montenegro will address the high-level segment of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
For Portugal, this UN debate comes just months before the country returns to sit, from January 1 of next year, as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for the 2027-2028 biennium, for which it was elected with the largest vote ever for a Portuguese candidacy to that body (and, for the first time, on the first ballot).
Portugal, which ran under the motto “Prevention, Partnership, Protection,” has already been a member of the Security Council in the biennia 1979-1980, 1997-1998 and 2011-2012. Whenever it ran, Portugal was elected.
The General Assembly is the body in which the 193 UN member states sit on equal footing and has an exclusively representative function, but it is the Security Council that makes binding decisions in which five major powers (China, United States, France, United Kingdom and Russia) are permanent members with veto power.
Portugal’s representation at the annual general debate at the United Nations has alternated between the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister.
In 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025 it was the former head of state Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa who traveled to New York, and in 2017, 2020 and 2022 the intervention before the General Assembly was undertaken by the former prime minister, António Costa, with this being Luís Montenegro’s second participation, who first spoke in 2024.
