A symbolic absence. Emmanuel Macron will not participate in the Cop29 summit, which began this Monday, November 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The absence of the French president comes against a backdrop of deterioration in relations between France and Azerbaijan, particularly after the French condemnation of the Azerbaijani military offensive against the Armenian separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023. Baku had taken over the region and pushed more than 120,000 Armenian civilians into exodus.
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Since then, France has strengthened its relations with Armenia, providing weapons and supporting its position. In response, Azerbaijan chose to fuel independence movements in French overseas territories. On Azerbaijani television and newspapers, strong anti-French sentiment became omnipresent.
“Complex relations” with Azerbaijan
“We have complex relations, “complicated” in diplomatic language, with Azerbaijan, and there will be no event in which French officials will participate which would in any way highlight this or that element of Azeri policy” , detailed Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the Minister of Ecological Transition, before the Senate Committee on Regional Planning and Sustainable Development on Wednesday November 6.
Anne Hidalgo (PS), Laurent Wauquiez (LR), Yannick Jadot (Ecologists) … Several French political figures had called for a boycott of the summit in a column published Thursday, November 7 in Le Figaro. They urged “the government to support strong and symbolic action for the boycott of Cop29”.
The minister will still go there from November 21 to 24 for the final phase of the negotiations. “It is up to us to wear the colors of the Paris agreement. The COP is a multilateral UN negotiation which is the only negotiation related to the climate which brings together all the countries of the world. explained Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
Several leaders boycott the summit
Emmanuel Marcon is not the only leader to shy away from this meeting. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will also be absent. This boycott is « regrettable », judged Laurence Tubiana, Sunday November 10 on FranceInfo. “It’s regrettable for Cop29, because it’s an important Cop,” explains the director general of the European Climate Foundation, which was one of the architects of the Paris climate agreement in 2015.
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By being absent, “we cannot easily succeed in the Cop30 [l’année prochaine au Brésil] which is, 10 years after Paris, a very important anniversary,” she continues. “A crucial step”, according to her “to implement this Paris agreement”.
