French President Emmanuel Macron (d) shakes hands with Chadian transitional President Mahamat Idriss Deby on the steps of the Elysee Palace in Paris on June 21, 2023 (AFP/Ludovic MARIN)
By hosting a summit which aims for nothing less than to reform the international financial system, Emmanuel Macron puts on his favorite diplomatic costume: that of intermediary between the North and the South, which is active in all directions to reduce the “fracture of the world” . With mixed results.
“I feel it: we can make a huge difference for the planet and against poverty,” the French president tweeted emphatically on Wednesday, on the eve of the opening in Paris of the Summit for a new global financial pact which, for two days, will welcome some forty Heads of State and Government.
The ballet of interviews began on Wednesday at the Elysée with the Chadian and Gabonese presidents or the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
The idea of this informal forum had been launched in November.
It is a red thread of the foreign policy of Emmanuel Macron, who defends “effective multilateralism”. It has multiplied the One Planet Summit, on the sidelines of formal negotiations on climate and biodiversity, but also annual events such as the Paris Peace Forum, with often modest results.
– “Old Gaullian vision” –
Similarly, by going to China to urge his counterpart Xi Jinping to use his influence on Russia to end the war in Ukraine, by inviting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the July 14 parade with similar aims, or even by facilitating the participation in the G7 summit in Japan of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Emmanuel Macron always wants to be on the initiative.
Bertrand Badie, professor at Sciences-Po, sees in it a “continuity with the old Gaullist vision, this desire for a France which keeps its rank in the world and which claims to be able to regulate everything”, without necessarily having the means to its ambitions because it “has become a middle power which does not want to admit itself as such”.
But this specialist in international relations also detects “a lucidity, which must be recognized in him, to understand that the way out of the current crises passes by a preferential targeting of the countries of the South and in particular of the emerging ones”. The “good intuition” of the French president is therefore to have “understood that he has a card to play as an intermediary between the West and the emerging countries”.
This posture, he pushes it to try to be the first Western leader invited, next August, to the summit of the Brics, this group which brings together Brazil, China, South Africa, India but also the Russia.
At the podium of the UN General Assembly last September, Emmanuel Macron had theorized the need to “build a new contract between North and South”, to avoid “the fracture of the world” and meet the challenges of the era, from the conflict in Ukraine to climate change and the fight against poverty.
– “Impatient pragmatism” –
The Paris summit is part of this desire to “avoid the logic of blocs, of a confrontation” between the West and the “global South”, notes Célia Belin, of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
And here too, she adds, “the intuition is good”: “there is a need and an enormous demand from these countries” to improve the international financing system, because “the despair is very great”.
Suddenly, France arouses a mixture of strong expectations and skepticism.
Emmanuel Macron has achieved some results in terms of participation, with Brazilian Lula and Chinese Premier Li Qiang. He also co-signed a forum with twelve leaders, including Joe Biden, who undertake with him to “move forward on concrete measures” for a “just and united ecological transition”.
But there are also notable absentees, in the forefront of which the American president precisely, as well as the Indian Modi.
Above all, in the absence of a formal mandate from the United Nations, this meeting organized “quickly and a little improvised” also risks “being one more summit”, fears Célia Belin.
In her eyes, this is the corollary of what she calls the “impatient pragmatism” of Emmanuel Macron, who wants “everything to work right away”, with a method that is not always there. laudable ambitions.
“The French president is practically one of the only Europeans to try to play this role,” she adds. “He has that merit.”
© 2023 AFP
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