INTERVIEW
"Our house burns" Echoing the words of Jacques Chirac, Emmanuel Macron was alarmed in a tweet of the gigantic fires ravaging the Amazon rainforest. The head of state denounced an "international crisis". What pique the susceptibility of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, who reproached him, also on Twitter, to adopt a "colonialist mentality".
"We must establish a balance of power with the Brazilian government if we want to get something," reacted, on the eve of the opening of the G7 in Biarritz, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Secretary of State to the Minister of Economy and Finance. For this government official, France has the means to act on the situation in the Amazon playing diplomatic pressure, including the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement, currently being ratified by the various European parliaments.
"The Mercosur provides a clause of compliance with the commitments of the Paris Agreement, with sanctions if it is not respected," she wants to remind the microphone of Sebastien Krebs, on Europe 1. "Who asked that this clause is put in Mercosur? It's France. "