FERNANDA PERRIN
NEW YORK, USA (FOLHAPRESS)
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) told German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz that he intends to close the agreement with the European Union while he is president of Mercosur.
The PT member took command of the bloc in July. The mandate lasts six months.
The leaders met this Tuesday (19) in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The meeting took place at the hotel where Lula is staying – the president has avoided traveling due to the pain.
Ministers Mauro Vieira (Foreign Affairs), Margareth Menezes (Culture), Esther Dweck (Management), Marina Silva (Environment) and Paulo Pimenta (Communications) accompanied the PT member at the meeting.
Other topics at the meeting were the Ukrainian War and environmental preservation.
The meeting is one of five bilaterals that Lula has this Tuesday. In the morning, he met with the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, before speaking at the opening of the General Assembly.
In the afternoon he had a meeting with the President of Austria, Alexander van der Bellen. The two spoke about COP30, which will be held in Belém, energy transition and green industrialization – themes that have also been emphasized by the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, who is accompanying Lula on his trip to New York.
Lula also spoke to the Austrian about the biofuels initiative launched by Brazil, India and the United States during the G20 meeting last month.
The PT member also invited van der Bellen to visit Brazil together with a business delegation.
After the meeting with Scholz, Lula meets with the Prime Minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Store, and the President of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
This Wednesday (20), the main bilateral meeting on the PT’s agenda takes place, with the American president, Joe Biden. Haddad must accompany Lula to the meeting with the American.
The two will jointly launch an initiative on decent work in the 21st century. Topics such as precarious work, union representation and applications are among the topics that will be addressed.
Brazilian and American union leaders will also be present at the event, as well as the Minister of Labor, Luiz Marinho.
Afterwards, Lula meets with the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, with the director of the WHO (World Health Organization), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and with the president of Paraguay, Santiago Peña.
In his speech this Tuesday, the PT member returned to themes that had already permeated his speeches, such as combating inequality and hunger. However, he was more incisive in his criticism of the international system, and called on other countries to act.
“We must, first of all, overcome the resignation that makes us accept such injustice as a natural phenomenon. To overcome inequality, there is a lack of political will from those who govern the world,” he stated.
One of the targets of Lula’s criticism was the IMF (International Monetary Fund). The president pointed out that last year the institution lent US$160 billion to European countries and only US$34 billion to African countries.
The president attacked the unequal representation of the fund and the World Bank, in which countries that contribute more resources have greater voting weight. For Lula, this is “unacceptable”.
With his speech, the PT member reinforces the pressure for reform of these institutions. The flag was also embraced by the United States, which sees it as an instrument to compete with China – the Asian giant has used financing for developing countries as a way of gaining influence over them.
Lula emphasized the emergence of other multilateral spaces beyond the UN, the backdrop to an empty conference this year in New York.
“BRICS emerged in the wake of this immobility and constitutes a strategic platform to promote cooperation between emerging countries. The recent expansion of the group at the Johannesburg Summit strengthens the fight for an order that accommodates the economic, geographic and political plurality of the 21st century.”
The PT member also criticized the WTO (World Trade Organization), in its paralyzed view of the protectionism of rich countries.
The post Lula tells the German chancellor that he wants to close an EU-Mercosur agreement this year appeared first in Jornal de Brasília.
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