https://carnegieeurope.eu/2022/06/29/brazil-eu-relations-at-best-and-worst-of-times-pub-87307
Oliver Stuenkel
Misunderstandings about the union’s inner workings color Brazilian perceptions about the EU’s role in security, trade, and the environment. In spite of this hurdle, Brussels is well positioned to engage with and work alongside Brasília to tackle climate change, the war in Ukraine, and coronavirus recovery.
Published June 29, 2022
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Introduction
In August 2019, relations between Brazil and the European Union (EU) entered their worst crisis since the country established diplomatic relations with the bloc in 1960. In response to several European governments’ criticism of Brazil’s environmental policies in the Amazon rain forest, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro taunted his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, and former German chancellor Angela Merkel, saying that fires in the Amazon and the deforestation of parts of Brazil’s rain forest were an “internal issue” and that “the Amazon belongs to Brazil.”1 To the far-right president and his followers, European criticism of Brazil’s environmental policies represented undue interference…
