French President Emmanuel Macron paid an important three-day visit to the Federal Republic of Brazil from March 26 to 28. As part of the bilateral visit, the French leader made a somewhat adventurous tour, visiting the Amazon rainforest, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and finally the capital Brasília.
During the entire visit, Macron emphasized clearly and loudly his intention to revitalize Brazilian-French relations. He and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, did not hide their bromance. Some media jokingly mentioned the term wedding to emphasize the unusual closeness of the two statesmen. In a figurative sense, something like a wedding really happened. More precisely, something like a reconciliation has happened since France and Brazil have good relations that have lasted for two centuries. After several years of stagnation, it seems that a positive trend in the development of relations has begun.
Historical development of cooperation
France was the first European country to recognize the independence of Brazil (proclaimed in 1822) in 1825. In 1959, the Brazilian House was inaugurated at the University of Paris. In 2003, France invited Brazil to the G8 summit in Evian. The year 2005 was the year of Brazil in France, and 2009 was the year of France in Brazil. Paris and Brasília formed a strategic partnership in 2008.
The main areas of cooperation are trade exchange, renewable energy sources, nuclear energy, defense, technological innovation, ecology, medicine and joint cooperation in Africa. Paris has been and remains a strong supporter of Brazil’s efforts to become an important geopolitical player in the international arena, including permanent membership in the UN Security Council, of which France is a member.
The French are helping the Brazilians to apply and develop technologies in the military, energy, IT, industrial and space sectors. According to a 2013 BBC survey, 54% of French consider Brazilian influence positive, and 50% of Brazilians consider French influence positive. In a significant minority are those who perceive the influence of another state negatively.
Compatible interests
Brazil is France’s leading trade partner in Latin America and the fourth most important partner outside the OECD. Over 500 French companies have been established in Brazil and they employ more than 250 thousand workers. Brazil is France’s leading partner in Latin America for cultural, scientific and technical cooperation. Three French secondary schools (Brasília, Rio and São Paulo) have a total of over two thousand students. The international organization that promotes French culture and language, Alliances françaises, in Brazil is the oldest and most extensive in the world: it has 74 institutions in 52 cities.
Brazil and France are the largest majority Roman Catholic countries on their continents. Brazil and France share a 730 km long land border on the South American mainland between the Brazilian state of Amapá and the French overseas department, the modern colony, of French Guiana. Cross-border cooperation between the two countries is mostly good. It enables a better integration of F. Guiana into the surrounding geographical environment, prevents crime and encourages the development of the economy of the Amazon region. At the initiative of Brazil, France was granted observer status in the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO). There are direct flights between the two countries organized by airlines: Air France and LATAM Brasil.
Negative effect of Bolsonaro’s term
Macron’s visit is important because relations between the two countries have deteriorated significantly during the reign of colorful Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). The fundamental reason for the disagreement was the attitude towards the Amazon rainforest.
At the time, President Macron and other European political leaders criticized Bolsonaro’s government for not taking concrete measures to prevent deforestation in the Amazon. It was the excessive exploitation of the rainforest that caused terrible fires and the destruction of a large number of plants, animals and soil. Bolsonaro commented in 2019 that he would accept $20 million in G7 firefighting aid if Macron publicly retracted criticism he found offensive. This did not happen and relations remained bad. Escalation of tensions over this environmental issue froze French-Brazilian relations and prevented their development. In late 2019, it was reported that the Brazilian military considers France its biggest potential threat due to disputes over the Amazon rainforest.
A new takeoff
The trend changed when Lula came to power in January 2023. In June 2023, he visited the French Republic on the occasion of the New Global Financial Agreement summit, and Lula and Macron also met last December during the UN Climate Change Conference, COP 28, held in Dubai. Macron is the first French president to visit Brazil in 11 years. The Brazilian president traveled about 1,600 km to the city of Belem, the capital of the state of Para, to meet his French colleague. The warm welcome showed that Lula holds Macron in high esteem, as well as the relationship between the two countries. On the last day of the visit, March 28, Macron was formally welcomed at the presidential palace Palácio do Planalto, a monumental work by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.
The presidential palace is located on the square that was ravaged on January 8, 2023 by rebels loyal to President Bolsonaro, who was defeated in the elections. With an honor guard and almost the entire Brazilian government in attendance, Lula paid tribute to the French leader, hugging him several times, before awarding him the highest honor reserved for foreigners, the Order of the Southern Cross. In return, Macron awarded the first lady of Brazil, Rosângela da Silva (Janja) with the French Legion of Honor. Later, a working lunch was organized at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Itamaraty Palace, where former Brazilian soccer player Rai Souza Vieira de Oliveira and active French soccer player Dimitri Payet were guests to emphasize the closeness of the two nations.
Big words
At the end of his stay in Brazil, Macron said: “I would like to sincerely thank President Lula for this state visit, for the invitation and for the wonderful way in which everything is organized… I will always be with you in all the ambitious projects you carry out for the G20, for the COP and everything that awaits us in the coming years. The visit was wonderful and the talks were excellent.” The French leader paid tribute to Lula’s government’s “spirit of resistance” for “restoring democracy” after an attack by Bolsonaro’s supporters in January 2023.
Lula retorted: “The dialogue between our countries represents a bridge between the Global South and developed world, in favor of overcoming structural inequalities and a more sustainable planet. Brazil and France are determined to work together to promote, through democratic debate, a common vision of the world. A vision based on the priority of production over unproductive finance, solidarity over selfishness, democracy over totalitarianism, sustainability over predatory exploitation.”
United in the protection of the Amazon
One of Macron’s main motives for the visit is the protection of the Amazon rainforest and the fight against climate change. The two countries have agreed to launch an investment program for the protection of the Brazilian and French (Guyana) Amazon rainforest worth one billion euros. It is a public-private partnership program. Brazilian public banks (such as the development bank Bndes) and French development agencies will form “technical and financial partnerships”.
The two leaders showed their determination to prevent the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest by 2030, thus contributing to the fight against climate change. Last year, according to government data, Brazil reduced deforestation by 50%. This is a very welcome decision because about 60% of the Amazon area is located in the Brazilian national territory. Additionally, in 2025, Brazil will host the 30th conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP 30). The two countries agreed to develop new research projects in sustainable sectors and to create a research center for the exchange of technologies for the development of the bioeconomy. France could soon become a new member of ACTO because the Amazon rainforest also occupies the territory of F. Guyana.
Great potentials of economic cooperation
Economic cooperation was one of the most important topics. France is the third largest investor in Brazil. Merchandise trade in 2023 has reached a whopping 8.4 billion USD. However, Macron has openly expressed dissatisfaction with the large gap in direct investment. While more than a thousand French companies have invested about 44 billion dollars in Brazil, Brazilian companies have invested only 2 billion dollars in France.
Therefore, at the 5th Brazil-France Economic Forum, Macron called on powerful Brazilian entrepreneurs to use all the potential of cooperation and initiate greater investments in his country. Brazil assumed the presidency of the G20 organization from December 1 last year under the slogan: “Building a just world and a sustainable planet.” In November, the summit of the organization will be held in Rio de Janeiro. Macron has publicly backed Lula’s economic agenda for the G20, including Brazil’s idea of working on a global tax for the richest.
Free trade agreement – the main stumbling block
In 2019, after two decades of extremely arduous negotiations, the European Union and Mercosur (the South American trade bloc of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and partners) reached a framework agreement on free trade. Since he came back to power last year, Lula da Silva has tried to put the agreement into practice on several occasions. However, the agreement is still pending and awaiting its ratification.
Meanwhile, France is the most prominent in its opposition arguing that South American producers do not meet the health and environmental standards of the EU (they emphasized beef the most). Macron also confirmed during the visit that the current agreement does not benefit both sides. The French leader called the agreement “very bad” and said that it should be buried in favor of a new one that will be “responsible from the point of view of development, climate and biodiversity”.
Lula noted that he is “very calm” and diplomatically emphasized that Brazil is “not negotiating with France”, but with the EU. “We still have time,” said Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad. “It is true that we lost an opportunity at the end of last year, but we should not give up on this agreement.” Haddad added that Lula invested a lot of time in the agreement and that he will continue to strive for a closer relationship with the EU market. Earlier in March, EU officials emphasized that “decisive progress” could be achieved by July.
Defense cooperation
Lula and Macron discussed the ways in which they could strengthen cooperation in the field of defense. Macron said he wanted to “go beyond” the production of helicopters and submarines and saw “enormous bilateral potential”. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), France is the second largest arms exporter in the world after the US. The French can supply the Brazilian armed forces with the most modern weapons and military equipment. Submarines are a point of contention.
Macron promised to open a “new chapter” in military cooperation as he and Lula launched the fourth submarine built for the Brazilian navy by France’s Naval Group under an agreement signed in 2008 by Lula and Nicolas Sarkozy. Brasília wants Paris to share its nuclear know-how to build a fifth submarine, the Alvaro Alberto, the first to be nuclear-powered. It has stuck so far, but there could be progress.
Different views on Ukraine and Russia
The biggest differences between the two presidents are over Ukraine and Russia. Macron and EU officials firmly support Ukraine in its war with Russia, while Lula has taken a neutral stance and has repeatedly said that Ukraine and Russia share responsibility for the war and has refused to isolate Moscow by imposing sanctions. Lula is against sending military or financial support to Kiev. “There is so much inequality that we don’t have time to think about another war,” Lula said, criticizing “investing in weapons while we have hunger in the world.” The Brazilian president reaffirmed his commitment to peace talks, a stark contrast to Macron, who talked about the possibility of sending European troops to Ukraine to help it resist Russian attacks.
Likewise, the two presidents have different views on Putin’s possible participation in this year’s G20 summit, which will be held in November in Rio. Putin missed last year’s G20 summit in New Delhi, avoiding the risk of possible arrest on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant. In September 2023, Lula said there was “no way” Putin would be arrested if he attended the summit. Shortly after, he backtracked and said the justice system would decide Putin’s eventual arrest, not his government. When asked about Putin’s participation in the G20 summit at Lula’s invitation, Macron said that the topic must meet the consensus of the organization’s members. “If it’s not a useful meeting and if it’s divisive, we shouldn’t do it,” the French leader suggested to his colleague.
Disagreements about Venezuela
For Lula, the priority is not Ukraine, but neighboring Venezuela, which Macron agreed with. Both condemned the exclusion of the candidate of the main opposition coalition, Corina Yoris, from the July 28 presidential election. “We very strongly condemn the exclusion of a serious and credible candidate from this process,” Macron said.
Lula described the situation as “serious” and said that there is no “legal or political explanation for banning an opponent from being a candidate”.
“I told Maduro that the most important thing for the return of normality to Venezuela is to avoid any problems in the electoral process, to hold the elections in the most democratic way possible.”
Conclusion
The commitment to working together to protect the Amazon rainforest and the fight against climate change, as well as the will to strengthen economic and military cooperation, are the most important positive contributions of Macron’s visit to Brazil. This visit could mark a new beginning for French-Brazilian relations despite differences in world politics. Differences in relation to Ukraine and Russia and the free trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur should not seriously damage bilateral relations. To a good extent, current French-Brazilian relations can be measured by the Lula-Macron personal relationship, which is extremely cordial. Stronger cooperation should bring tangible benefits to both the French and the Brazilians. Macron will benefit from cooperation with Brazil, which has improved its international standing as Latin America’s most populous nation hosts the G20 summit this year and the 30th UN climate change conference next year. Lula welcomes any meeting and agreement that can to some extent satisfy his great country hungry for new knowledge, skills and investments.