LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (right) and French President Emmanuel Macron (left) during the signing ceremony of the bilateral agreement at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, March 28, 2024.
INTERNATIONAL – Keep the spirit of the club. From Brasilia, Emmanuel Macron estimated that an invitation from Vladimir Putin to the G20 summit should be the subject of a consensus within the club of the most industrialized countries. “The meaning of this club is that it must be consensual with the 19 others, it will be the work of Brazilian diplomacy” he declared during a joint press conference with his counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
A preventive declaration, while the event is due to take place next November in Brazil. “If there is an appointment that can be useful, it must be done. If it is a meeting that is not useful and creates division, it should not be done”, estimated Emmanuel Macron. Must be “ in the service of peace and the common interest »he insisted.
Macron draws parallels with his situation in August 2019
The French head of state also recalled that he himself had asked himself the question of inviting Vladimir Putin to the G7 summit in France in August 2019 but that due to a lack of consensus, he had given up in order to invite him to a separate meeting a few days earlier at his summer residence in Brégançon. “The situation was less serious but finally, the war had started and Crimea had already been taken and I did not have the consensus of the others. Some told me: “If you invite them, I won’t come, it’ll be a problem.”he said.
Since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, the question of the presence of the master of the Kremlin has arisen at each G20 summit. He ultimately did not attend those organized in Indonesia in 2022 and in India in 2023. The Russian president is the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) which accuses him of war crimes for the deportation of Ukrainian children.
Lula had first assured that Vladimir Putin would receive an invitation to go to the G20 in Rio and that there would be no “ reason for him to be arrested”, before changing his mind. At the end of the New Delhi summit in September 2023, he finally declared that it would be up to his country’s justice system to decide on the arrest of his Russian counterpart if he went to Rio, while saying he hoped that “ by then, the war will be over”.
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