From Belém to São Bento, passing the Palácio das Necessidades, the sigh of relief was almost audible – Lula da Silva’s victory in the Brazilian presidential election last Sunday was received with particular enthusiasm among Portuguese political leaders. And it wasn’t just for political proximity. Viewed from Lisbon, Lula’s return to power brought the South American giant closer to Portugal. “We miss Brazil very much,” António Costa said in response to the election resultsin a sentence that illustrates the recent past of Portuguese-Brazilian relations.
Lula da Silva’s return to the Planalto Palace should bring the political relationship between the two countries, which has been almost frozen in recent years, back to normal. “It’s easy for the Luso-Brazilian relationship to be different and better,” as it has “reached minimal, very low levels in recent years,” said Carmen Fonseca, professor of International Relations at Universidade’s Faculty of Social and Human Sciences. Nova de Lisbon and researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI-Nova). “There will be more coordination and dialogue. Relations, which were neutral and cold in these years, will improve,” also expects Luís Filipe Castro Mendes, ambassador who was consul general in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1990s. The Portuguese think the same, as evidenced by the reaction of the Foreign Minister, João Gomes Cravinho, who said after the victory of the PT candidate that “there is something promising for our country” in the election results of last Sunday. Starting with the resumption of the bilateral summits between the two countries, which should be back on the agenda in 2023 after a six-year hiatus.
Marcelo “gave the right signals at the right times”
Francisco Seixas da Costa was the Portuguese Ambassador to Brasília from early 2005 to late 2008, coinciding with Lula da Silva’s presidency. There is no doubt that the re-election of the former president is good news for Portugal. “During the eight years that he was president, Lula da Silva was extremely positive for relations between Portugal and Brazil. I can witness that.”, the ambassador recalls. “It makes sense that there is a sense of positive expectation on the Portuguese side.”
Looking at the relations between the two countries during Jair Bolsonaro’s tenure, there are not many doubts about the estrangement that characterized this period. “During these four years, Brazil has kept an insignificant agenda on the external front for purely internal reasons. And Jair Bolsonaro was clearly not one to deal with relations with Portugal, nor with Portuguese-speaking countries,” said Francisco Seixas da Costa. , and stressed that in this scenario, the Portuguese response “was what it usually is when things are not the most positive: an attitude of vigilance, of waiting for better days”. For the former Portuguese ambassador to Brasilia, the “Portuguese state behaved well, knew how to wait, and that’s what it does historically. The speech remains a bit dizzy about friendship, brotherhood, friends, brothers, cousins… essential. There is an interest in the bilateral relationship that goes beyond business cycles”. The diplomat calls her a “rhetorical kissing” – “a way to buy time, where the circumstances cannot affect the relationship”.
That’s what Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has been doing for the past four years – and “he did it very well”. “It is clear that an attempt has been made on the Portuguese side to swallow some frogs, in the belief that there are more important things than these simultaneous incidents. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has, in my opinion, taken steps with a great sense of state. I think you did a wonderful job. We must swallow the frogs when it is in our interest, obviously not go beyond the limits of the dignity of the state”, defends Francisco Seixas da Costa. More than that, Marcelo “knew how to make the right signs at the right times . He met Lula da Silva, he had the foresight to realize that the future passed there. Did you run any risk? walked. Lula couldn’t have won, Bolsonaro won and we had to redo the game from the beginning. But when I took that risk, the risk paid off.”
The largest immigrant community in Portugal
Carmen Fonseca believes that there are now a whole host of “elements that could somewhat reinvigorate Luso-Brazilian relations”, starting with “Lula’s history of approaching Portugal” and continuing in what is increasingly “a key element” in relations between the two countries: the growing number of Brazilians living in Portugal, in what is now the second largest Brazilian community abroad (the largest is in the US) and the largest immigrant community in Portugal. According to data from the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF), 204,694 Brazilians were living in Portugal at the end of 2021, a number that has already risen to 252,000 this year and, if the growth trend continues, will quickly reach 300,000 (and this data does not include persons with double nationality or non-lawsuits).
“This shapes the relations between the two countries, it has a decisive influence,” emphasizes the researcher, a specialist in Brazilian foreign relations, recalling that the migration issue was already a very important item on the agenda of the Brazilian government at the beginning of the century. was president when the so-called Lula Agreement was signed in 2003, which allowed “at the time the regularization of thousands of Brazilian citizens who were in an illegal situation in Portugal”. Today the situation is no longer the same, but the dimension of the Brazilian community makes it “a fundamental player in the relationship between the two countries, the migration agenda is crucial” in the Luso-Brazilian relationship and can dictate new areas of cooperation, for example in the education sector.
Another ubiquitous theme between Portugal and Brazil is the economic issue. On the other side of the Atlantic is a market of over 200 million people and without the language barrier, but the trade balance shows a huge deficit on the Portuguese side. According to data from the Portuguese Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade (AICEP), Portugal exported 707 million euros of goods to Brazil in 2021, while importing 2.5 billion euros. A clear trend in the period from January to August this year: 574.9 million in exports, 3.1 billion in imports. Olive oil, followed by wines, are the products that Portuguese companies sell most to Brazil. Conversely, Portugal mainly imports crude oil or bituminous minerals, but also soybeans and corn. But if we go to the tourism sector, the figures show a strong increase in Brazilian tourism in Portuguese territory: according to AICEP data, between January and August of this year the number of overnight stays by Brazilian guests increased by 645% compared to the same period in 2021.
A country that “looks from south to north”
What common interests do Portugal and Brazil have at the international level, besides the more direct relationship between the two countries? For Castro Mendes, Lula’s return should lead to a “return to the main lines of Brazilian foreign policy in relation to what they were before Bolsonaro”, but bearing in mind that the world is not the same and that the differences between Portugal and Brazil “in terms of geopolitical and geoeconomic integration they are very important and should not be forgotten”.
“Brazil’s importance is great, but it is not in the axis of our priorities,” underlines the former culture minister, noting that Portugal is part of the major blocs of the EU and NATO, while Brazil “is in a different circuit, it wants to join the south-south relationship that started with the BRICS [grupo de países que junta o Brasil, Rússia, Índia, China e África do Sul]. I think it will continue to approach the great countries of the South and also resume its commitment to Africa.”, the ambassador says, pointing out that this latter issue is of particular importance to our country. “If Brazil bets on the CPLP [Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa], would of course be very important for our policy towards Portuguese-speaking countries. But Brazil had to convince itself to put more” into the Portuguese-speaking community, which “never aroused much enthusiasm on the part of Brazilians”.
Francisco Seixas da Costa also remembers that Portugal and Brazil are in many ways two distant countries: “Brazil is a country in the South, looking at things from south to north, there are things that we run into, namely relations with the European Union, but it doesn’t always look the same.. Now look at the case of Ukraine.”
But if Portugal and Brazil move on different geopolitical signs, it also opens a window for possible bridges. Carmen Fonseca points to an issue that should be on the bilateral agenda and in which Portugal can play a relevant role – the agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, which was “frozen” for lack of ratification by the national parliaments of EU countries: “Of course this depends on how the president [brasileiro] and its government set foreign policy priorities, but Portugal can be an important part of the dialogue with the European Union, in reviving the dialogue, and can present itself as that key, both for Brazil and for the EU.
Source: DN
