(Adnkronos) – Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella will give a concluding address on Wednesday at the 2025 Cotec Europe Summit in the western city of Coimbra in Portugal, which aims to forge a new future path for European competitiveness amid profound global change.
Spain’s King Felipe VI and Portugal’s president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will also give concluding speeches at the summit on Wednesday, while Italy’s former premier Mario Draghi, will close Wednesday morning’s summit proceedings in a keynote address entitled ‘Innovation and Competitiveness’.
Draghi and Mattarella are travelling to Portugal together and are expected to hold talks on the main issues facing Europe and its economic growth – a central theme of the summit.
The summit also aims to foster policy cooperation between Portugal, Spain and Italy which can be a ‘benchmark’ for Europe; and to forge partnerships between the three countries’ large companies in the aerospace and defence, health and life sciences, microelectronics, highperformance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors, according to the summit programme.
The tagline of the meeting, ‘A Call To Action,’ is inspired by reports written by Draghi – an ex-president of the European Central Bank – and another former Italian premier, Enrico Letta, which look at ways to stimulate concerted European cooperation aimed at tackling the current global challenges which are shaping the world.
On Wednesday afternoon, after the summit’s opening sessions, the prestigious University of Coimbra will award an honorary doctorate in Law to King Philip and one in economics to Mattarella.
Italy’s longest serving president, Mattarella, 83, has office since February 2015.
