“Dear Lula, do we write the rest?” The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a powerful voice of the countries of the “Global South”, began this two -day state visit this Thursday, June 5 in France, during which international crises will be discussed, as well as the free trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur, which Paris firmly opposes.
This is the first state visit to France of a Brazilian president since 2012, and takes place a few months since the COP organized by Brazil Next November.
Lula will be welcome with a ceremony in the invalids, before a work lunch at the Elysée with French president Emmanuel Macron, followed by a state dinner at night. The two men have warm relationships, despite disputes.
• A dozen cooperation agreements
Lula’s visit, which had received his French counterpart in March 2024, aims to “strengthen” the strategic links between the two countries. A dozen cooperation agreements in the fields of the environment, technology, defense, energy and health should be signed.
In the agitated global context, marked in particular by the customs surcharge imposed by US President Donald Trump about his partners, and by the wars in Ukraine and the Near East, “it is even more important to find convergences with Brazil, a great emerging state” that this year guarantees the rotating presidency of the BRICS block, surmosted to the Elylysée.
• New impulse for a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
France counts in particular about the mobilization of Brazil, which recognized the Palestinian State in 2010, to weigh the result of the conference organized by France and Saudi Arabia at the UN in mid-June, aimed at restoring an impulse to a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“There will be no peace whenever one does not know that the Palestinian people are entitled to their state,” Lula said Tuesday, a few hours before his departure to Paris.
“It is precisely due to the suffering of the Jewish people in their history that the Israel government should treat the Palestinian people with humanism and common sense,” added the Brazilian president, qualifying the Israeli offensive in Gaza as “genocide”, as he had already done several times in the past.
• “The state of the” Ukrainian Archive presented
With respect to Ukraine, France “intends to present the state of the archive to President Lula”, with “an assaulted part that is ready for peace, and another part, the attacker, who rejects any peace or dialogue proposal.”
Brazil, who currently presides over the group of emerging countries of the BRICs, continues to maintain good relations with Russia and Lula was in Moscow on May 9 for the commemorations of the victory against Nazi Germany, where he was received by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• Mercosur Agreement in the Fund
The free exchange agreement between the EU and the Latin American countries will be at the bottom of Lula’s visit to France. This agreement with Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay should allow the EU to export more cars, machines and liquors, in exchange for the entrance to meat, sugar, rice, honey or South American soybeans.
Paris opposes this agreement “in its current form”, unlike other European countries such as Germany or Spain. On the eve of the visit of the Brazilian president, the French agents gathered several agricultural sectors in the assembly on Wednesday to reaffirm their opposition to the agreement.
Jean-François Guihard, president of the interprofession of cattle and meat (Interbev), called Emmanuel Macron as “extremely firm” against the Brazilian president “to say that this agreement is not possible.”
But in the midst of a commercial war with the United States, “there is a new international context” that should promote in favor of the agreement, according to Brazilian diplomacy. After his visit to Paris, the Brazilian president will participate on June 8 at an economic summit in Monaco, then it will be pleasant on the 9th with President Macron for the opening of the UN conference on the oceans.
Source: BFM TV
