Brazil’s Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said France is becoming “insignificant”, threatening to withdraw from the French market if Paris does not stop criticizing deforestation in the Amazon.
“You’d better treat us well, otherwise we’ll send you to hell,” he said Tuesday in Brasilia, during a congress of business leaders from the restaurant sector, filmed excerpts of which began to be released in the Brazilian press on Wednesday.
“You burned Notre-Dame”
Paulo Guedes, a key minister in the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, also put the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019 on the same level as those ravaging the Amazon rainforest.
“One day, a French minister said to me: ‘you are burning the forest.’ I replied: ‘and you, you burned Notre-Dame,'” he said, without specifying which minister he was referring to.
“These are useless accusations! You did not burn Notre-Dame, but you failed to prevent the small block (where the cathedral is located) from burning down. At home, (the Amazon rainforest) is bigger than Europe and you are criticizing us,” he added.
“Later, I gave another example (to the minister): ‘our trade with you (France) was 2 billion dollars in 2000, as much as with China. Today, it’s 7 billion with you and 120 billion with China. you become insignificant to us.
Emmanuel Macron’s opposition to the ratification of Mercosur
In his speech on Tuesday, Paulo Guedes criticized the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for opposing the ratification of the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur (which brings together Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay), doubting Brazil’s commitment to defend the environment, in the face of advancing deforestation and fires in the Amazon.
“Either France opens its market to us and to Mercosur, or it becomes insignificant for us and we look the other way,” he insisted.
In September 2019, Jair Bolsonaro and Emmanuel Macron had many battles over forest fires in the Amazon, with the Brazilian president accusing his French counterpart of threatening Brazil’s “sovereignty” by criticizing its environmental policy.
Paulo Guedes himself had added fuel to the fire, declaring at the time that the first lady Brigitte Macron was “really ugly”.
Source: BFM TV
