The Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP) has completed ratification of the Mobility Agreement by all member states, after Equatorial Guinea completed the process last week, the Lusophone organization announced.

According to a note published on the community's official website, the permanent representative of Equatorial Guinea to the CPLP, Tito Mba Ada, was received by the CPLP's executive secretary, Zacarias da Costa, last Thursday "to deposit the instrument of ratification by Equatorial Guinea of the 'Agreement on Mobility among the Member States of the CPLP,'" signed on July 17, 2021, in Luanda.

With Malabo's ratification, this process has been completed by the nine member states of the organization.

On the 24th, Zacarias da Costa alerted to the need to create a significantly more favorable framework for the circulation of people between member states.

"The conclusion of this agreement is not the final stage of the process, but rather the starting point for the creation of a significantly more favorable framework, the movement of people," which should, he argued, "now be made concrete 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 thus be called upon again and again to make their indispensable contribution to building a CPLP that is undoubtedly a community of states and that also seeks to affirm itself increasingly as a community of people," he added.

Zacarias da Costa was speaking at the solemn opening session of the XI CPLP Parliamentary Assembly.
The Mobility Agreement establishes a "framework of cooperation" 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 assume "commitments arising from mobility in a progressive manner and with differentiated 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 East Timor.

On the past 30th the new regime for the entry of immigrants into Portugal came into force, which foresees a facilitation in the issuing of visas for citizens from the CPLP, in the scope of the Agreement on Mobility between Member States.

According to the decree cited by Notícias ao Minuto, CPLP citizens can obtain a work-seeker visa or a CPLP residence visa, and are exempt from presenting valid travel insurance, proof of means of subsistence, a copy of the return transport ticket, and presentation in person to apply for a visa.