“We all agree on the same objective”. French President Emmanuel Macron closed the two days of debates in Paris with the idea of “consensus”. “Scribing” the discussions that took place at the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact, the French Head of State returned to the ambitions that guided the meeting, referring to the Bridgetown agenda: “A world where the most vulnerable countries are better equipped to deal with crises and climate change”.
Among the list of advances set out by Emmanuel Macron is a partnership with Senegal for a just energy transition to support the country in achieving universal access to energy and developing a low-carbon energy system, launched with the International Partners Group (IPG) comprising France, Germany, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada.
In addition, Zambia’s debt should be relieved and $100 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) will be reallocated by the IMF to poor countries to support their development and green transition. The World Bank, for its part, is considering including in its agreements with the most vulnerable countries a clause suspending debt repayment in the event of a disaster.
Emmanuel Macron also returned to the pledge of $100 billion a year made by rich countries at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 to help developing countries, stating, as did the President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, that “it should finally be kept”.
Finally, Mr Macron called for a “global mobilisation” to introduce international taxes on financial transactions, airline tickets and shipping. This last point, which had been announced as one of the major issues of the Summit, did not meet with the expected response, particularly from the heavyweights, the United States and China.
On the subject of the financial transaction tax, which was the subject of an appeal in Le Monde by a group of 350 scientists ahead of the debates on 21 June, French MEP Pierre Larrouturou (S&D) told EUROPE that the European Parliament and the African Parliament were determined to fight for its implementation. “France and Europe would have to do it before COP28 to tell the United States or Japan to fall in line”, he said, asserting that everything was already “ready” for its application within the EU and that it only depended on France’s will. “There is nothing historic about this. We should have gone further and faster than was announced. The countries of the South are angry”, he added of the Summit's conclusions.
And with good reason: during his speech on the first day of discussions, the Kenyan President, William Ruto, expressed his indignation about the existing global financial infrastructures. “How dare you? The system is trapping us!”, he hammered on. These words resonated to some extent with those of his Brazilian counterpart, Iñacio Lula da Silva, who at the final discussion on 23 June denounced: “With this mechanism, whoever is rich is always rich and whoever is poor is always poor”.
Asked whether the Summit held in Paris over the last two days could turn things around, CAN Europe President Chiara Martinelli was sceptical: “This is a lost opportunity. We would have liked to go further on a number of points: private funding, in particular”. She concluded: “This type of summit is an opportunity for the EU to take the lead, but this has not really been the case”. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)