Costa calls for unity between Portugal and Spain in the exploitation of lithium reserves – Politics

• Photo: António Pedro Santos/Lusa

Antonio Costa

The Prime Minister defended this Wednesday that Portugal and Spain should unite and work together in the exploration of lithium reserves, claiming that it is an important resource of cross-border regions for electric mobility.

“Portugal and Spain have a great opportunity for cross-border cooperation, because the two countries together have the largest reserves of a fundamental natural resource for electric mobility in the coming years: Lithium”, declared António Costa in the final part of the speech he gave before the La Toja Forum, which took place at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in Lisbon.

António Costa pointed out that the largest lithium reserves exist on both sides of the Portuguese-Spanish border.

“More than competing for each one to have its own battery factory and each one to have its own refinery, we must have the capacity to jointly develop a strategy to jointly value a resource that, being the largest European reserve, is still insufficient and will always imply the importation of more lithium to create a sustainable factory for the production of batteries”, maintained the leader of the executive.

“We have every advantage to work together”, reinforced the prime minister, in a speech in which he also defended the acceleration of energy interconnections between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe, as well as the Iberian mechanism in force to disconnect the evolution of the electricity gas price.