Sports Calendar

Both Brazil and Britain, and our citizens, believe the world must do more to tackle global poverty and disease and see proper education and healthcare extended to all. Our support for the international finance facility for immunisation, and for the international air travel levy, shows our determination to find innovative approaches harnessing the public and private sectors to address today’s challenges.

We are also working together to improve global governance and to make multilateral institutions more representative and effective. This can only be helped by recognising the increasing importance of emerging powers such as Brazil. So the UK strongly supports Brazil’s bid for permanent membership of a reformed United Nations Security Council. But we also work closely together on wider United Nations reform, to make the organisation fit to meet the challenges ahead. We are also committed, in accordance with our national capacities, to contribute to the spread of peace and security around the world.

Our two countries have many links. Britain was one of the first countries to recognise the newly independent Brazil. British firms played a significant role through investment and expertise in putting in place the infrastructure that is the foundation of modern Brazil. And, of course, it was British engineers who first brought football to Brazil – a shared passion that links our countries to this day and that we hope will lead us both to the World Cup final this summer.

The strong friendship between our countries now owes as much to shared values and views of how we tackle the large global challenges as it does to football. We are sure that our friendship will continue to grow in the years to come.