Macron absent, who will represent France in Baku?

POLITICS – A crucial meeting in a context tense by the election of Donald Trump and organized in a country which attracts criticism. This Monday, November 11, the COP 29 for the climate opens in Baku, Azerbaijan, where some 198 countries must agree until November 22 on commitments to limit global warming. However, as explained recently, Emmanuel Macron will not go there to represent France.

Officially, for purely formal reasons. “ It does not systematically participate in all COPs. In particular, he did not attend COP 24 in Poland and COP 25 in Spain », underlined the Élysée to the HuffPostputting into perspective any diplomatic quarrel with the regime of authoritarian President Ilham Aliev, against a backdrop of tensions linked to the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, in which Paris supports Armenia. The fact remains that the Minister of Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, admitted before the Senate that the geopolitical context did not necessarily encourage a trip by the Head of State under these conditions.

« Relations complexes », dit Pannier-Runacher

“We have complex, complicated, diplomatically speaking, relations with Azerbaijan, and there will be no event involving French officials that would in any way highlight this or that element of Azeri policy,” she declared before the Senate Sustainable Commission.

However, there is no question for Paris of missing the event. Thus, if no French leader will participate in the high-level segment (which is a first since 2015), the Minister of Ecological Transition will take the plane to Baku in a second step. “ Agnès Pannier-Runacher will go to the COP from the evening of November 20, and she will stay in Baku until the end of the negotiations », His entourage said ahead of the event.

« She is going because there is no question of standing still and because France is fully mobilized and engaged in climate negotiations.insisted his team, specifying that the objective of Paris is “ to concentrate on the negotiations », and less to participate in the first phase discussions between heads of state or government. Does this mean that France will be completely absent from this first stage? Not quite. “ France will be present at the high-level segment, but at an administrative level », nuance the minister's office, meaning by this that France only does without political representation. “ At the level of negotiators, the French teams will be present in the various events which will be organized at the start of the COP », further specifies the Agnès Pannier-Runacher team. Or how to be there, without being there.

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