BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES
Weekly analysis with Sam Morgan
Emmanuel Macron spent the week in Brazil, enjoying the hospitality provided by his counterpart, Lula Da Silva. But behind the smiling faces and warm embraces, the two leaders do not see eye-to-eye on everything.
Macron’s Brazil trip was his first as France’s president and if you were only analysing it based on the content of his Instagram feed, you would swear that he had found his true soulmate in the form of Lula Da Silva.
Toothy grins under towering trees, holding hands on a sun-kissed lake and warm hugs between two old friends: the trip looked like it was a glowing success.
But the two presidents are still divided over the Russia-Ukraine war, a military partnership and, most importantly, a troublesome free trade deal between South America and the European Union.
BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES includes weekly analysis not found anywhere else, as Sam Morgan helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels Behind the Scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.
It is not surprising why this is Macron’s first visit to Brazil. Most of his first term overlapped with Jair Bolsonaro’s. The far-right former army captain who was defeated by Lula in last year’s election was hardly top of the Frenchman’s priority list.
An apologist for the military junta that ruled Brazil for twenty years and known for being ‘South America’s Trump’, Bolsonaro also made extremely rude and sexist comments about the French president’s wife, Brigitte Macron.
But Lula’s victory has meant Brazil has begun to mend plenty of the bridges that Bolsonaro burned during his presidency and France is a good friend to have.
Unfortunately for Lula, even the meme-friendly visit could not sway Macron’s view on the Mercosur deal, a long-gestating controversial free trade deal between the European Union and the eponymous South American trade bloc.
France’s farmers despise the draft deal because of the perks that Brazil’s exporters will enjoy and Macron has also pointed to a lack of climate and sustainability standards in the pact.
He is also wary ahead of June’s EU elections about how the far-right could use the Mercosur deal as yet another talking point to secure yet more votes.
The agreement would create a trade bloc of around 750 million people and drop or reduce tariffs on a number of goods. Advocates say that it would be of a big benefit to both sides, across a number of sectors.
One EU diplomat from a country that wants to get Mercosur done and dusted told Behind the Scenes that “Macron’s comments certainly weren’t helpful”. No kidding.
Negotiators and other officials hope to make a breakthrough by the summer break but as time has shown with Mercosur, it is not advised that you hold your breath. There is a reason this has taken decades, rather than just years.
It is yet another example of how powerful agriculture is. Fears about cheap beef imports ruining European farmers is not the only reason for anti-Mercosur sentiment but it certainly is a big one.
Big trade deals are inherently divisive and there will always be parties that object to them. Just take the doomed US pact, TTIP, and the still controversial Canada agreement, CETA, as prime examples.
But Mercosur is about far more than just farming and deforestation. The EU has a chance to reduce its dependency on China by signing this deal and, as a result, also nip Chinese overtures into South America in the bud.
There is also the fact that the countries involved with Mercosur have vast supplies of raw materials that will be increasingly important for sectors like renewable energy and electric mobility.
Mercosur is not about now but tomorrow. By continuing to block it, Macron is arguably going against his principles and weakening the entire EU in the process.
No one is saying that the draft deal is perfect. Indeed, it has a lot of shortcomings. Macron is right that the climate element of it is not strong enough. Surely something can be done to fix that though?
Macron and Lula looked like they were on the set of a romantic movie during his trip. Like many filmmakers that realise their production is not quite what they imagined, maybe Mercosur’s negotiators can just “fix it in post”.
BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES includes weekly analysis not found anywhere else, as Sam Morgan helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels Behind the Scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.
