“I was waiting with great impatience for this moment”: Emmanuel Macron congratulated Lula, winner of the presidential election in Brazil, on the phone on Monday, less than 24 hours after the announcement of the results.
” Congratulation ! “Launched the French head of state to the icon of the Brazilian left who returns to power after beating outgoing far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. “This is great news for us,” he added, according to a video with excerpts of this conversation posted on his Twitter account.
“I must tell you that I was waiting with great impatience for this moment so that we could relaunch a strategic partnership that lives up to our history and the challenges that are before us”, continued Emmanuel Macron, who had been the one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Lula on the night of Sunday to Monday.
Tense relations with Bolsonaro
The French head of state had very tense relations with Jair Bolsonaro. A violent controversy had opposed the two men in 2019, when the Amazon was on fire, where deforestation broke records under the mandate of the outgoing Brazilian president. The far-right leader then attacked Brigitte Macron, the wife of his French counterpart, on his physique.
According to the Elysée, Emmanuel Macron and Lula spoke of “a relaunch of the bilateral relationship in all areas” with, “among the priority areas of cooperation”, “the preservation of the climate and biodiversity”. The French presidency recalls that the Amazon is “a major challenge for France and Brazil, which share a border in this area with Guyana”.
“We are living a very happy day because we have been able to recover democracy in our country”, said the Brazilian president-elect to the French head of state, still according to this video.