Elma Saiz meets with Costa Rica's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Worship to advance the Bilateral Agreement on Social Security

Meeting between the Minister for Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Worship of Costa Rica, Arnoldo André

The two ministers expressed a firm commitment to addressing the key points of the agreement, with the aim of benefiting the citizens of both countries on issues essential to guaranteeing the rights of workers.

The text of the agreement will be finalised imminently, following agreement on important issues such as the totalisation of the insurance period, the posting of workers and the contribution for professional contingencies. Progress has also been made on specific provisions to strengthen bilateral cooperation on social security.

The meeting between the two ministers culminates a series of meetings between the delegations of the two countries, who have reached understandings on most of the points negotiated.

They also exchanged good practices in the area of inclusion, highlighting the recent conclusions of the Social Policy Laboratory, which the Government of Spain summarised in a decalogue of recommendations that Saiz handed over to Minister André.

National Refugee Resettlement Programme

Elma Saiz also reiterated to the Costa Rican minister Spain's commitment to support the countries that first receive refugees. As a result of the trilateral agreement between Spain, the United States and Canada, our country received almost 300 Nicaraguan refugees from Costa Rica for resettlement last year, an involvement for which Minister André expressed his gratitude.

Thanks to these complementary pathways to resettlement, almost 80 Nicaraguans and their families are being trained to work in a solar panel company in a town in Valladolid, fulfilling two of the objectives of these pathways: to cover the lack of labour in certain sectors and to help with depopulation.

Furthermore, on a trip to Washington last January, Minister Elma Saiz extended the Government of Spain's commitment to receive another 500 people, to be selected with the help of UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). On her last visit to the US a few days ago, Saiz announced that she had formally requested UNHCR to begin the recognition work to welcome them to Spain as soon as possible.

Non official translation