President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met, this Friday (23), with the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, at the Élysée Palace, in Paris. The two talked about the free trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union (EU) and the terms to unlock the final negotiation between the parties. The president went to Paris to attend the Summit for the New Global Financing Compact, promoted by President Macron, this Thursday and Friday. The summit was attended by more than 300 public, private or non-governmental entities, including more than 100 heads of state. During his speech, alongside the Frenchman, Lula called the demands made by the European Union for the finalization of an agreement with Mercosur a threat. The EU sent additives to be added to the agreement, with the forecast of imposing fines in case of non-compliance with environmental obligations. “The additional letter that was made by the European Union does not allow an agreement to be reached. We are going to make the answer, and we are going to send the answer, but we need to start discussing. It is not possible that we have a strategic partnership and there is an additional letter threatening a strategic partner”, said Lula at the event. The president has also already defended changes in points of the free trade agreement on government purchases. “They want the Brazilian government to buy foreign stuff instead of Brazilian stuff. And if they don’t accept Brazil’s position, there is no agreement. We cannot abdicate government purchases, which are the opportunity for small and medium-sized companies to survive in this country,” Lula said in a speech earlier this month. Approved in 2019, after 20 years of negotiations, the Mercosur-EU agreement needs to be ratified by parliaments of all the countries of the two blocs to enter into force. The negotiation involves 31 countries, which could take years and face resistance. climate change needs to be accompanied by actions against poverty and demanded more investments from rich countries in less developed economies and in actions against social, racial and gender inequalities. “We are an increasingly unequal world, and wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer people, and poverty concentrated in the hands of more people. If we don’t discuss this issue of inequality, and if we don’t put this with as much priority as the climate issue, we can have a very good climate and the people [vai] continue to die of hunger in many countries around the world,” he said. For the president, the world needs to improve international institutions aiming at a new world governance, in accordance with the geopolitics of the present, to coordinate efforts and support nations in need. According to him, the United Nations needs to regain representation and political strength, so that important measures from an environmental point of view can be applied globally, as a way to combat the effects of climate change. “If we don’t change these institutions, the climate issue becomes a joke. Who will comply with the decisions made by the forums that we make?”, he questioned. “It is not fulfilled because there is no global governance with the strength to decide things and for us to comply. If each one of us leaves a COP and returns to approve things within our National State, we will not approve”, he added. The president also recalled that Brazil will host the COP30, in 2025, for the first time in an Amazonian state, in Pará, in the capital Belém. Agenda in Paris At the meeting with Macron, Lula also discussed the war in Ukraine and themes on the bilateral agenda, such as the resumption of cultural exchange and the strategic partnership between the countries in the area of defense. Brazil and France have an agreement for the transfer of French technology under the Submarine Development Program (Prosub), which has already delivered a submarine in 2022 and plans to deliver another three annually by 2025. After the meeting with the French president, today in Paris, Lula had audiences with the president of the Naval Group, Pierre-Eric Pommellet, with the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, with the president of Congo, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, and with the president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Brazilian Ilan Goldfajn. The presidential entourage only returns to Brazil at the weekend. Lula arrived in Paris yesterday (22) in the morning and, throughout the day, had a series of bilateral meetings, among them with the presidents of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, and of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez. He also met the Prime Minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry, with whom he spoke about the global and regional situation and the Brazilian government’s support for stability, combating poverty and reconstruction in the Caribbean country, after the earthquakes of 2021 and 2010. At the end of the day, the president spoke at the closing ceremony of the Power Our Planet event, at the invitation of the British band Coldplay. During his speech, Lula blamed rich countries for the climate crisis and reaffirmed the Brazilian commitment to zero deforestation in the forest by 2030. Italy Lula has been in Europe since last Tuesday (20th) and, before the French capital, he fulfilled an Rome and the Vatican, Italy. There, he met Italian President Sergio Matarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Lula also visited Pope Francis, at the Vatican, where they discussed topics such as the fight against hunger and the war in Ukraine. Still in Italy, the president met with the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, in return for the Italian’s solidarity when Lula was imprisoned in Curitiba, in 2018 and 2019.
Agência Brasil
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