The scene took place just under a month ago, at the G20 meeting in Italy.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro approached a group of world leaders to talk with Turkish Recep Erdogan.
But there was also Olaf Scholz, Germany’s deputy prime minister and finance minister and candidate of the party that had won the country’s last elections.
It was Bolsonaro’s first meeting with the politician who is expected to succeed the current German leader, Angela Merkel.
But apart from a protocol greeting, Bolsonaro did not exchange any more words with Scholz — the Brazilian president spoke only to Erdogan.
After a few seconds, Scholz turned his back on Bolsonaro and went to the next wheel, where he was immediately greeted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who soon struck up a conversation with the German.
Now, Scholz has everything to take command of Europe’s biggest economy — bad news for the Bolsonaro government, according to analysts interviewed by BBC News Brasil.
Relations between the two countries, which are currently very bad, tend to get worse because the new German government will have an ambitious environmental agenda as its pillar, precisely the area in which Brazil has been highly criticized nationally and internationally.
In addition, Germany will be commanded by a politician from a legend that has historical relations with Bolsonaro’s biggest adversaries, the Workers’ Party and former president Lula.
Environmental agenda at the heart of the new government
An agreement was announced on Wednesday (24) between Scholz’s party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD, its acronym in German), with two other parties, the Green and the Liberal Democratic (FDP), to form a coalition to govern the country.
The expectation now is that Scholz, 63, will be elected prime minister by the German parliament between the 6th and 9th of December.
It will be the country’s first change in command after Merkel’s 16 years in power — and the new government arrives with ambitious goals that put environmental protection at the center of its agenda.
Neutralizing Germany’s climate impact by 2045 will be the coalition’s main focus.
Among the goals is the phasing out of the use of coal “ideally” by 2030, eight years ahead of schedule.
At the same time, the new government must make solar energy panels mandatory on the roofs of new commercial buildings and private homes.
Under Scholz, Germany will also seek to use 2% of its territory to produce wind energy and focus on hydrogen-based electricity generation.
By 2030, 80% of the country’s electricity must be obtained through renewable energies, according to the new plan,
The goal of eliminating cars with internal combustion engines by 2035 and having 15 million electric cars in circulation by then will be maintained.
Scholz Party has historical links with PT
Political scientist Mathias Alencastro, a researcher at the Brazilian Center for Planning Analysis (Cebrap), however, assesses that the climate issue will be one of Scholz’s challenges.
Because his government has on one side the greens, who are pushing for strong investments in favor of an environmental reform of the German economy, and on the other, liberals, who want to preserve the country’s fiscal stability.
The new prime minister will have to balance these interests, and this could have the indirect effect of increasing pressure for changes in Brazil’s environmental agenda, says Alencastro.
“Scholz could end up doing the same thing as [presidente francês Emmanuel] Macron, who struggled to make progress on this issue internally and tried to compensate by being more proactive in foreign policy”, says the professor of International Relations at the Federal University of ABC.
At the same time, the SPD has historical links with the Workers’ Party and former president Lula, because of the roots of both legends in union activity.
It was this relationship that even helped to promote the meeting between Scholz and Lula this month in Berlin.
After the meeting, the future German prime minister said: “I am very pleased with our good discussions and I look forward to continuing our dialogue.”
The former president also met with Martin Schulz, president of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is maintained by the SPD. Schulz visited Lula while he was in prison.
Alencastro also emphasizes that Scholz’s political group was engaged in the campaign for Lula’s release and that these meetings have a strong symbolism.
“They are choosing sides. It’s not that they’re going to support Lula’s campaign, but Germany will pay attention to the elections in Brazil,” says Alencastro.
All of this should promote, in his opinion, a change in Germany’s attitude towards Brazil compared to what Merkel had been doing until then.
“Merkel had a generic diplomacy, without a Latin American specificity, but Scholz may differ from her in this aspect, despite having been elected with a proposal for continuity”, says the political scientist.
“The SPD’s political agenda matches this strengthened environmental agenda in Germany, and this could make Brazil a preferential target at a time when the country is highly exposed internationally because of environmental issues”, says Alencastro.
Pressure against Brazil to grow in the European Union
The Social Democrats won the Sept. 26 election, ahead of Merkel’s Christian Democrat alliance, which had its worst ever election result.
The Greens achieved their best performance ever with candidate Annalena Baerbock.
His campaign revolved around an ambitious alliance aimed at initiating a paradigm shift to transform the economy.
Describing the climate crisis as the greatest challenge of our time, she said: “We can transform our economy to become climate neutral. We have an agreement where climate neutrality is a common denominator.”
Baerbock is expected to become foreign minister in the new government, while his co-leader of the Greens, Robert Habeck, is expected to take over as deputy prime minister, as well as overseeing the energy transition.
According to Scholz, this alliance between the three parties in his government — nicknamed the “coalition of traffic lights” because of the three colors of the captions — will take place “on equal terms”.
The Green Party’s prominence in the alliance is likely to make life even more difficult for the Bolsonaro government, says Oliver Stuenkel, professor of International Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV).
“The environmental issue is no longer a separate issue and becomes part of all areas. It is integrated into the national project. Brazil will no longer be able to say that it will not be able to make progress in this area in the bilateral relationship, but it can do well in the others . It won’t happen,” says Stuenkel.
The specialist also believes that this will reposition Germany within the European Union’s power game in relation to its posture towards Brazil.
He explains that there is tension in the bloc between those who believe that Brazil should be hard-pressed to change its environmental policies, even if this has a cost in the economic area, and others who consider that this could pave the way for greater influence from others. powers over the Brazilian government.
“With the prominent position of the Green Party, which is more powerful today than when it left government in 2005, this battle is clearly being won by the first group,” says Stuenkel.
Relations between Brazil and Germany are bad
The formation of the new government comes at a time when relations between the two countries are at a bad stage.
The FGV professor gives as an example of this the interruption of meetings between authorities of both countries foreseen by the strategic partnership agreement, signed in 2002 in the first year of the Lula government.
And the suspension of payments from Germany to the Amazon Fund, which finances measures and projects to preserve the forest.
Germany is the second largest donor to the fund, behind only Norway.
“We have been without a bilateral visit between heads of state for three years. This is unprecedented. The only thing that saves is that the relationship between the two countries is so old that many parties involved are continuing it despite the crisis,” he says Stuenkel.
The analyst says that it didn’t look good for Brazil either that the country left the impression after the COP26 that it hid data that point to an increase in deforestation in the Amazon.
A report in the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper showed that a report completed in late October by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), which is part of the government, showed a worsening in the rate of forest clearing.
The federal government denies having hidden the study and says it had access to the data when it was released, after the end of the United Nations climate summit, held this month in Glasgow, Scotland.
“The Brazilian government lost any credibility after that. The tendency is for relations to go into hibernation, because it is believed that there is no way to move forward until the Bolsonaro government is finished,” says Stuenkel.
Germany’s weight on the Brazilian economy
This is relevant because Germany is currently one of Brazil’s main trading partners.
In 2020, it was the seventh largest buyer of Brazilian products and the third largest exporter to the country.
In addition, it has a strong tradition of investing in international cooperation with Brazil.
At the same time, as Europe’s biggest economy, the decisions that will be taken by the new government will have a big effect on its neighbors.
At a news conference, Scholz said that “Europe’s sovereignty is the cornerstone of our foreign policy.”
He highlighted Germany’s friendship with France and partnership with the United States.
This proximity to the French is another point that disadvantages Brazil, recalls Argemiro Procópio Filho, a professor at the Institute of International Relations at the University of BrasÃlia (UnB).
The French president is currently a foe of Bolsonaro.
“France was already pressuring Germany against Brazil because it has commercial interests that conflict with Brazilians. Now, with the threat that Macron will not be able to be reelected and with the Social Democrats in power in Germany, the tendency is for the pressure to grow even more,” says Procopio Filho.
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