BRASILIA The French President, Emmanuel MacronShe is preparing a state visit to Brazil. He will be one of the first world leaders to be received by the Presidentelect. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Brasilia, for bilateral negotiations next year. The agenda and date of the visit have not yet been set, but it is certain that Macron will set foot on Brazilian soil in the first half of the year, according to diplomats involved in the preparations. The trip was actually supposed to take place in March right after Carnival, but the state visit has been postponed by the French Council Presidency in the past few days.
Before Macron, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna will come to Brazil in February to meet agendas and prepare the French President’s trip. Neither will attend Lula’s inauguration on January 1st. The prospective representative from Paris will be a direct assistant to the French Chancellor, Delegate Minister Oliver Becht, in charge of Foreign Trade, Attractiveness and French Abroad.
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Lula was in Paris last November when he was received by French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss the climate crisis, among other global issues. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/Lula Disclosure
The French President knows little about South America. Before Brazil he was at the G20 summits in Argentina and French Guiana. It is his third trip to the region.
France is one of Brazil’s most important trading partners in Europe. The European country is the largest foreign employer and the third largest to invest in Brazil. In 2019, according to the embassy in Brasília, there were 1,042 French companies in Brazil employing 472,000 people. In 2020, French investments on the national territory amounted to $32.2 billion, 6% of the total investments of other countries in the manufacturing sector, behind only the United States and Spain. The data comes from the central bank.
In addition, the countries have developed strategic partnerships in the defense sector. French technology is deployed in the Brazilian Armed Forces, with Army, Navy and Air Force equipment. These are missiles, systems, helicopters. The most important is the ProSub submarine development program, four conventional and one nuclear, with knowledge and technology transfer. There is an exchange of experiences and a direct relationship in the patrol on the common border, in the region between French Guiana and Amapá.
Despite this multifaceted relationship, spanning cultural sectors, sports and academia, Macron has become an external political “enemy” in Jair Bolsonaro’s government. They only spoke face to face once. The Brazilian President and his Economy Minister Paulo Guedes have spoken out insultingly at the appearance of French First Lady Brigitte Macron. Guedes went so far as to say France was becoming “irrelevant” to Brazil and said he would “turn the hell on Paris” if he wasn’t treated well.
The French leader applied international pressure to Brazil at the height of the Amazon fires. Parisian authorities were scorned during a visit to Brasilia. Bolsonaro complained that Macron wanted to “revoke” Brazil’s sovereignty over the Amazon and was acting protectionist in the face of setbacks in Brazilian environmental policy and blocking the progress of the trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union.
The relationship to the PT is reversed. Lula and Macron supported each other in both countries’ presidential elections. Before the election campaign, the PT was received with respect by the former President in Paris. Macron was among the first to congratulate him on his election victory and said they should join forces. He explained that Lula’s election marks a “new chapter” in Brazil’s history. The Frenchman released a video of a phone conversation in which he confided that he was impatiently waiting for the moment and suggested restarting the strategic partnership.