"I'm not afraid to say that we are at the height of relations between Portugal and France, there were a number of factors that came together. It has to do with the transformations of globalization, of having managed to introduce ourselves into French production chains, the importance given to education in Portugal and which leads to us having a very interesting level of human resources, and then there are those aspects of luck, since with or without tax incentives, the French have rediscovered our country", said Jorge Torres Pereira.

As soon as he arrived in 2017, the Portuguese diplomat, arranged meetings with the main French investors in Portugal and assured that the return of this action was very positive.

"Many accepted and that was a winning focus on our part. I also paid attention to 'clusters' that should be nurtured, keeping an attention to more traditional sectors, such as technology, aeronautics, space and oceans and we established networks of people interested in Portugal", he explained.

Currently, France is Portugal's second largest customer in terms of exports, but also at a diplomatic level, partly due to the weight of the Portuguese community in France.

Jorge Torres Pereira will be replaced in the coming days by José Augusto de Jesus Duarte, who has been until now, Portugal's ambassador to China.