Macron charms Brazil’s Lula with non-alignment pitch and submarines

SAO PAULO, Brazil — France is beefing up its defense ties with Brazil — shored up by President Emmanuel Macron’s first state visit to the country.

The cooperation between the two was highlighted Wednesday when Brazilian first lady Janja Lula da Silva smashed a bottle of champagne on the bow of the submarine Tonelero, and then Macron and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pulled a ceremonial lever to launch the vessel.

The Scorpène-class submarine was built for the Brazilian navy by Brazil’s Itaguaí Construções Navais (ICN) using technology transferred by France’s Naval Group. ICN is a joint venture between the Brazilian government and Naval Group, which owns a 41 percent stake.

The Tonelero is the third of four conventionally-propelled submarines agreed in a $10 billion deal signed by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Lula in 2008.

That pact also included building a nuclear-powered submarine, the Álvaro Alberto, which has seen delays and disagreements over the transfer of nuclear technology.

Macron said he wanted to open “a new chapter” in the project, adding: “You want it, France will be at your side.”

“We have never shared our so much of our know-how as we did with Brazil, and we are proud to have done so," Macron said.

Lula said: “Brazil wants the know-how, wants nuclear technology, not to go to war.”

Brazilian authorities have signaled that France is now more willing to collaborate on the nuclear submarine. “Perhaps there was resistance in the past,” Maria Luisa Escorel de Moraes, secretary for Europe and North America at the Brazilian foreign ministry, told reporters last week.

Speaking at the launch ceremony, the head of the Brazilian Navy Admiral Marcos Sampaio Olsen insisted that Brazil should be trusted as a reliable nuclear partner.

The future nuclear-powered submarine “will give Brazil the political and strategic stature it deserves,” he said.

Common views

The French leader underlined the common vision of the two countries.

“We share the same vision of the world and its power balance. We refuse to accept a world imprisoned by conflict between two great powers, and we love the independence of great diplomacy and great armies,” Macron said on the second day of his three-day visit.

He stressed that both France and Brazil refuse to be “vassals” of other global powers.

We “reject the partition of the world, the vassalization ... this is what binds us together,” he added.

That is why the French president insisted that Paris was ready to “go further” and envisaged other military deals with Brazil, mentioning Rafale fighter jets.

That sentiment is an effort to recalibrate relations with Brazil, which turned frosty under Lula's predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

But they don't conceal deep differences.

Macron is a vocal supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia, and has even raised the possibility of Western troops being sent to help Kyiv. Lula has repeatedly rejected sending weapons to help Ukraine.