Lula to meet with Macron, Pope on Europe trip

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will leave Brazil on Monday night for a week-long trip to Europe, where he will meet with Pope Francis and participate in the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Lula will depart from Recife airport and arrive in Rome on Tuesday, where he will meet with Italian sociologist Domenico de Masi. Mr. Masi previously visited Lula in prison in early 2019, calling him “the most important leader in the world.” After serving 580 days in prison for corruption and money laundering, Lula left jail in late 2019 after the Supreme Court quashed his sentence, ruling that Sergio Moro was a biased judge in his case.

On Wednesday, Lula will meet separately with Italian President Sergio Matarella, Pope Francis, and Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri. Lula met the Pope in early 2020. This time around, he has promised to invite Pope Francis to the Círio de Nazaré, a huge Catholic festival held every October in the Amazonian city of Belém, a shoo-in to host the COP climate conference in 2025.

On Thursday, Lula will attend the French-led summit. Its ostensible goal is “to build a new contract between the countries of the North and the South to address climate change and the global crisis.” This is music to Lula’s ears. In several speeches, including to foreign audiences, Lula has emphasized that at COP15 in Denmark in 2009, developed countries committed to a collective goal of mobilizing USD 100 billion a year, starting in 2020, for climate action in developing countries. That has not yet happened.

On Friday, Lula is expected to have a bilateral working lunch hosted by Mr. Macron. Both leaders have recently expressed their own disagreements with the proposed terms of the EU-Mercosur free trade deal. The French agricultural lobby has been one of the main obstacles to the deal, and a reason for Europeans’ increasing environmental demands.

Since taking office on January 1, Lula has had a busy international schedule, with trips to Argentina, Uruguay, the U.S., China, the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

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