Amazon
fires spark Macron threat to kill South America trade deal
French
president takes aim at Brazilian leader ahead of G7 summit.
By HANS VON DER BURCHARD AND RYM MOMTAZ 8/23/19, 7:12 PM CET Updated
8/26/19, 4:48 AM CET
BIARRITZ,
France — The Amazon rainforest is ablaze, and Emmanuel Macron feels like he
just got burned.
Only two
months after Europe concluded a landmark trade deal with the South American
Mercosur bloc, the French president is threatening to kill it off over what he
sees as betrayal by Brazil's maverick President Jair Bolsonaro, who is accused
of allowing big business interests like ranchers and loggers to torch the
forest.
Macron has
called for the burning Amazon to lead the agenda of the G7 summit he is hosting
in Biarritz this weekend. In an unusually undiplomatic broadside against his
Brazilian counterpart, he concluded that Bolsonaro "lied to him"
about the Mercosur pact when it was struck in June, by promising to respect the
Paris Climate Agreement and to protect the rainforest, an Elysée official said.
If France
doesn't sign up to the EU-Mercosur trade agreement, it is dead.
Putting
deforestation onto the G7 agenda could well put Macron on a collision course
with Donald Trump in Biarritz. The U.S. president will be far keener to focus
on a French digital tax that he thinks penalizes U.S. tech companies. Trump
also has a far more cordial relationship with Bolsonaro and is also eyeing a
trade deal with him.
The accord
needs to be ratified by EU governments, the European Parliament and some 40
other parliaments across Europe.
When the
EU-Mercosur deal was concluded at a political level in June, Macron hailed it
as a "good deal" but warned of the need for vigilance on the
environmental fall-out. Bolsonaro has subsequently startled the international
community by accusing foreign environmental activists of being behind the
fires. He argues that foreigners should not be interfering in Brazilian
sovereignty.
"Bolsonaro’s
inaction on fires, and his response by talking of manipulation and
instrumentalization when the fires are highlighted, has made his inaction more
visible and tangible," the Elysée official said. "That’s why, as
things stand, we are opposed to the Mercosur [deal]. We are being coherent."
The French
comments raise very serious doubts over the EU's deal with Mercosur (comprised
of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay). The accord needs to be ratified by
EU governments, the European Parliament and some 40 other parliaments across
Europe.
Massive
forest fires have destroyed trees in the Amazon at record pace this year, with
Brazil’s space agency reporting its satellite data showed an 84 percent
increase in fires over the same period in 2018. The NGO Amazon Watch suggested
Thursday that many fires had been lit by farmers wanting to clear the land.
Macron's
opposition came hard on the heels of comments by Irish Prime Minister Leo
Varadkar, who vowed Friday his country would not ratify the Mercosur deal
"if Brazil does not honor its environmental commitments." He said the
idea that foreign non-governmental organizations were behind the fires was
"Orwellian."
The
Mercosur deal has proved especially politically toxic in both France and
Ireland because both countries have important beef farming constituencies that
feel threatened by waves of cheap imports from Brazil and Argentina.
Finland's
Finance Minister Mika Lintilä — whose country currently holds the EU's rotating
presidency — also said Friday that "the EU and Finland are urgently
exploring the possibility of banning imports of Brazilian beef."
Lintilä
added that he wanted to discuss the issue with his EU colleagues at a meeting
in Helsinki in mid-September.
A German
government spokesperson, however, said Friday that Berlin opposes Macron’s
threatened block, stressing that such a step is “not the appropriate response”
to fires raging in the Amazon rainforest.
In a
televised address late Friday, Bolsonaro vowed to take “firm action” against
the blazes and pledged to mobilize the army to support firefighters. Responding
indirectly to Macron’s threat, he said: “Forest fires exist in the whole world
and this cannot serve as a pretext for possible international sanctions.”
Trump
fallout
Macron
seized the political initiative in a tweet on Thursday night when he called the
Amazon fires "an international crisis" and vowed to "discuss
this emergency first order" at the G7 summit, which he will host from
Saturday to Monday in the upscale coastal resort of Biarritz.
European
threats to block the Mercosur deal could offer an opening to Trump, however. In
July he said he wanted to do his own tariff-slashing trade deal with Brazil. If
Macron snubs Bolsonaro, the Brazilian leader could quickly turn to Trump, who
is demanding fewer environmental conditions.
Land that
has been scorched by fire in the state of Mato Grosso | Rogerio Florentino/EFE
via EPA
European
Commission spokesperson Mina Andreeva on Friday directly acknowledged that risk
over Brazil's strategic direction: "We have seen that the American
president is trying to convince other words leaders to join him in rejecting
the Paris Agreement," she said.
"With
the EU-Mercosur agreement, Brazilian President Bolsonaro has made his choice,
he has come with us," Andreeva went on, adding that the deal was "a
way ... to push and encourage each other to live up to the commitments we have
made together."
Bolsonaro,
meanwhile, protested against Macron's proposal to make the Amazon fire a
priority at the summit of the G7, where Brazil will not be in attendance.
"The
French president's suggestion that Amazonian issues be discussed at the G7
without the participation of the countries of the region evokes a colonialist
mentality that is out of place in the 21st century," he wrote on Twitter.
This
article has been updated.
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