Toast offered by the Acting President of the Government at the Climate Conference (COP25)

Dear friends, first of all thank you very much, as I said before at the table when we had the opportunity to share many plans on climate action in the short and medium term; I would first of all like to thank you from my heart, for your presence in Madrid, your presence in Spain.

It's true that we have had to organise and hold this whole conference, this summit, in practically three weeks, four weeks; but I hope and wish that you can feel at home, that you can feel that Spain and Madrid are your own home. Many of you are going to be here for the next two weeks, or if not, many of the delegations representing you will be. I believe that the work we have ahead of us is very important, the expectations not only among the countries themselves, but the societies we represent are great; and I wish for each and every one of you that your decisions are as correct as possible. You also have the greatest of responsibilities and will need to show great generosity, because as we discussed earlier the challenge is enormous; it will require the combination of many different wills, but also a clear vision and a shared leadership. And in this respect I would like to recognise the shared leadership represented very faithfully for us by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, for whom I would like to ask for a round of applause in recognition of his leadership. And without a doubt, we should also recognise, as we are in Europe, the man who will have the floor after me, the next President of the European Council, Charles Michel, to whom I also wish the best of luck and success over the next five years; because we are going to need you at the head of the Council, Charles, and we are convinced that you will do an extraordinary job there.

Moving on, I would like to apologise for those issues you may feel are uncomfortable and that we have not been able to resolve in these weeks of very hard work in the run-up to this Conference; but you can take two things from it: the first is the commitment of the Ibero-American community to the multilateral agenda, which I believe we have here represented not only in the separate countries but above all in the extraordinary work of coordination carried out by Chile and Spain; and second, the commitment of a society, the Spanish society, the multilateral European society; because although it is true that some countries are questioning it, there are many more of us who in fact believe in this multilateral agenda.

So a toast to the COP and a toast to those countries that you represent.

Thank you. Cheers!

(Transcript edited by the State Secretariat for Communication)

Non official translation