President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva arrived in Berlin this Sunday afternoon (March 12) to complete a threeday agenda that marks a new chapter in the rapprochement between Brazil and Germany after a period of distance during the Temer and Bolsonaro governments.
Leaving the hotel where he is staying for his first appointment in the German capital a dinner with Chancellor Olaf Scholz Lula said the partnership between Brazil and Germany was “solid”.
“Our partnership with Germany is a very solid partnership. In fact, next year we will celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations, which is no small feat for relations between two countries,” he said. The 200th anniversary of German immigration to Brazil will be celebrated in 2024.
Lula will stay in Berlin until Tuesday. The agenda includes meetings with Federal President FrankWalter Steinmeier and Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz as well as the signing of partnerships.
It is the first official visit by a Brazilian president to Germany in more than ten years. The last time this happened was in 2012, when Dilma Rousseff was received by thenChancellor Angela Merkel. The visit also marks the fourth meeting between Lula and Scholz since the PT member returned to the presidency in January. At the end of January, Scholz had already paid a visit to Brasília the first visit by a German chancellor to Brazil in almost eight years.
Meetings with Federal President Steinmeier, a meeting with Federal Council President Manuela Schwesig, another meeting with Scholz and a meeting of the top leadership of the two governments as well as an agenda with representatives of German and Brazilian companies are planned for Monday (April 12).
After returning from dinner with Scholz this Sunday, Lula said that Brazil wanted to “strengthen the strategic partnership with Germany” in “intensive meetings” on Monday.
“I told my colleagues from Germany that it has been a long time since Germany invested in South America, especially in Brazil,” the president said. Germany “must now turn to Brazil. Especially now that Brazil is working on clean energy, renewal, energy transition, Amazon, biodiversity. Brazil is the hot ticket, just invest,” he added.
Resumption of government consultations between Germany and Brazil
The main highlight of Lula’s agenda in Berlin will take place on Monday and concerns the second edition of the socalled highlevel government consultations between Germany and Brazil, a dialogue mechanism that the federal government maintains with a few international partners and which provides for regular meetings of government representatives and ministers of the partner government.
The first and so far only edition of these consultations between Brazil and Germany took place in 2015, during the Dilma era. At that time, only ten countries belonged to Berlin’s select circle of closest partners: France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Israel, Russia, China, India, Tunisia and the Netherlands. At the first edition, then Chancellor Merkel was in Brasília with a delegation of ministers and secretaries who met with their Brazilian counterparts.
Germany originally expected that these meetings would take place every two years but this was never fulfilled. Behind the scenes, German diplomats concluded that the Temer government’s turmoil in 2017, marked by corruption scandals, was not conducive to a second edition.
Under Jair Bolsonaro, the resumption of meetings from 2019 became even more distant.
In power, Bolsonaro took a hostile stance toward the German government, especially as Berlin called for more environmental protection in Brazil. The Brazilian government also promoted unilateral changes in the management of the Amazon Fund, which has funding from Germany and Norway, which drew criticism from both countries and crippled the program. Given the dismantling of environmental policy in Brazil, Berlin also froze the sending of resources for environmental programs to the South American country during the Bolsonaro era.
Temer and Bolsonaro were never invited to official visits by the federal government. Temer only limited himself to attending a multilateral G20 meeting in Hamburg in 2017.
Dilma and Merkel in 2015, at the time of the first edition of the government consultations Photo: picturealliance/AP Photo
Rapprochement under Lula and Scholz
Germany is Brazil’s most important trading partner in Europe and Brazil’s fourth largest trading partner worldwide after China, the USA and Argentina. Around 1,400 German companies operate in Brazil, including Volkswagen, MercedesBenz, Siemens and Basf.
From January to October this year, bilateral trade amounted to $16 billion, with the balance favoring Germany. According to the Brazilian government, during this period Brazil exported $4.8 billion to the European country (10th largest export destination) and imported $11.2 billion (third largest source of imports).
Politicians from both countries began rehearsing rapprochement even before the end of the Bolsonaro government. In November 2021, while Scholz was still building his government, he met with Lula in Berlin, months after the Brazilian managed to overturn his court rulings and run for president again. Historically, Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Lula’s PT have had relationships that date back to the 1980s. Lula also maintained relationships with historic SPD figures such as former Chancellors Helmut Schmidt, Willy Brandt and Gerhard Schröder.
In January 2023, Federal President FrankWalter Steinmeier traveled to Brasília to take part in Lula’s inauguration ceremony. At the end of January, it was Scholz’s turn to visit Brazil, it was the first visit by a German head of government since 2015. In 2023, with Lula back in power, the two countries also reactivated several cooperation mechanisms, such as the Amazon Fund.
Brazil and Germany have common interests, such as concluding the agreement between Mercosur and the European Union and reforming international organizations such as the UN Security Council, but differences exist on issues such as the war in Ukraine and the current conflict in the Middle East.
MercosurEU agreement
In the case of the agreement between Mercosur and the EU, Germany is among the European countries that have been most in favor of the final conclusion of the contract, without raising objections like France, whose agricultural sector tends to fear competition with Brazilian producers.
In the current German government coalition led by the Social Democrat Scholz, the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP) is one of the main supporters of the agreement.
However, Lula’s return to power also weakened potential resistance from another member of the German coalition, the Greens. “What has changed between 2019, when the technical discussion was concluded, and now the arrival of President Lula,” German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, Green, said in March.
Behind the scenes, fears that a failure in negotiations could lead to Mercosur’s rapprochement with China are also weighing heavily on Germany’s decision to support the agreement. Most recently, members of the German government called for negotiations to be accelerated after Javier Milei won Argentina’s presidential election, fearing that his taking office would disrupt negotiations.
But despite German support for the deal, Lula’s visit to Berlin comes a day after a fresh setback in negotiations after French President Emmanuel Macron categorically stated that he was against the terms of the deal during an interview in Dubai, the venue of COP28 . .
This Sunday, while still in Dubai, before leaving for Germany, Lula responded to Macron’s statements and said he already knew that France took a more protectionist position.
“If there is no agreement, be patient,” the president said. “It wasn’t due to a lack of will. The only thing that needs to be clear is that they no longer say it is because of Brazil and they no longer say it is because of South America.”
Visit at a sensitive time for the Scholz government
In 2015, the first edition of the highlevel government consultations between Germany and Brazil took place against the backdrop of the growing economic and political crisis in Brazil, which would lead to the downfall of the Dilma government a few months later. The new meeting also takes place at a sensitive time, but this time on the other side of the Atlantic.
Currently, the Scholzled government is trying to find a way out of the German federal budget crisis, which risks ending ambitious environmental and investment plans to modernize the country’s industry and infrastructure.
Merkel and Bolsonaro in 2019. Relations between the countries deteriorated during the former president’s administration. Photo: Clauber Cleber Caetano/Presidency of the Republic of Brazil
The crisis began on November 15, when the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that Germany’s 2024 budget violated the rules of the German “debt brake” introduced in 2009, which limits Germany’s budget deficit to around 0.35% of GDP and has done so for years a testament to the European country’s fiscal discipline, but is now coming under increasing criticism for holding back public investment.
Specifically, after a lawsuit from the conservative opposition, the court blocked the Chancellor’s plans to redirect 60 billion euros left over from an emergency aid fund set up during the pandemic into a climate and transformation fund that would promote a green revolution in Germany and modernize industry of the country. Since then, the government has been trying to negotiate solutions to adjust the budget and reallocate resources.
The decision increased pressure on the already turbulent Scholz government, already struggling with the effects of a recession in Germany, and raised questions about whether the chancellor can hold together his coalition of Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens.
While Scholz’s SPD and the Greens are in favor of relaxing the austerity rules, the Liberals appear determined to maintain the debt limit.
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