Will the Lula government fall short? Problems in the exercise of the presidency of the BRICS, by Paulo Nogueira Batista Júnior

Can I talk about BRICS again? I’ve written a lot about it, probably too much. It is that I am perhaps the only Brazilian to have participated in the group’s activities, continuously, from its beginning in 2008 until 2017, which justifies to keep my involvement in the subject alive.

In 2025, there is a much stronger reason to return to the theme – the Brazilian presidency of the BRICS. We now have a unique opportunity that will not come back anytime soon. With the expansion of group members – from 5 to 10 countries – 10 years from now Brazil will return to the presidency. We cannot waste it.

Unfortunately, it does not seem that the Brazilian presidency will produce great results. I may be wrong, I hope you are, and maybe it’s early to say.

But the truth is that Brazilian government is not politically strong. Among other reasons, because he is infested with paintings they have or little or no identification with the BRICS and maintains priority connections with US and Europe (the famous fifth column). Itamaraty, for example, with some exceptions, has been dominated by bureaucracy and carreirism. The farm omits, with Minister Haddad frequently absent from the matter. The Central Bank has always been an obstacle to the BRICS. Galipole may change this, but one thing is the new president of the institution, another the heavy and inflexible machine of the Central Bank. From planning, I don’t even need to talk – except Márcio Pochmann in IBGE, what we have there is a collection of neoliberals, all referenced to the western agenda.

There are other exceptions, of course, both on farm and Itamaraty (and more in the first than in the second ministry). There are also exceptions in the advice of the President of the Republic. On the farm, a new generation of Brazilians does his best to beat the internal barriers to the advancement of the group. However, this new generation does not occupy much prominent posts in the ministry and is therefore limited in its ability to influence.

Error in setting the dome date and how to correct

One problem was the clamorous decision to make the BRICS summit in early July, which risks reducing the Brazilian presidency to just six months – insufficient time to make significant advances. The reason was the perception of the Brazilian government that Brazil could not organize two large meetings at the end of 2025 – COP 30 and the BRICS summit…

My God from heaven! Unfortunate, for at least two reasons. First: underestimate the country’s ability – why admit that two meetings would make us overwhelmed? Second reason: COP 30, except for best judgment, will have little practical utility – will probably be another opportunity to repeat buzzwords about the climate crisis, without practical repercussions. Lula and other leaders will make the speeches and usual appeals that will immediately go to oblivion.

BRICS are the main contesting force of the international status quo. It is the only group of countries capable of counteracting the G7 and offering concrete alternatives to the Western sponsored disorder.

What to do then? Two things. First: Make it clear at the July 2025 summit in Rio de Janeiro that it is an intermediate stage of the Brazilian presidency, which continues in the second semester with ministerial meetings, Xerpas and advisers – even taking advantage of the various occasions when representatives of the 10 BRICS countries are for other reasons (FMI and UN Bank meetings, for example).

There should be another meeting of the BRICS leaders in 2025!

Second, and most importantly, make it clear, from the outset, that Brazil intends to preside over a second meeting of the group’s leaders in November, in parallel to the G20 summit in South Africa. This would allow the Brazilian presidency and then pass the staff to India, the next country to hold the BRICS presidency. Most BRICS countries are also members of the G20 (case of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and Indonesia). The others (Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE and Iran) could be invited to attend as part of the Outreach that is always done in the G20 Presidencies.

Bureaucrats at Itamaraty or the farm can raise objections, claiming for example that it would be unusual and complicated. It’s not true. It was Brazil itself, thanks to President Dilma Rousseff, who created the tradition of holding encounters from the BRICS leaders on the margin of the G20 summit. The first was in Cannes, in 2011, on the occasion of the summit in France. At the time, I was there and testiments that there were seemingly unsurpassed difficulties. The idea had been launched by Brazil, but China and India did not understand who should call the meeting. Brazilian diplomats, among them the then Minister Antonio Patriota, explained to me that it would no longer be possible to do the meeting. I answered: “But then Brazil calls.” No one accepted the idea.

Shortly thereafter, behold, President Dilma’s Cannes (the leaders always arrive at the last minute at the summits). Confronted with the “impasse,” he said immediately, “Then I call the meeting.” And so it was. The first meeting of this type took place under the Brazilian presidency and went very well. I was reputed to have great influence on President Dilma, I barely had contact with her.

The following year, in 2012, we had a new meeting of this type in Los Cabos, on the occasion of the G20 summit in Mexico. This time, there was even a statement from the BRICS leaders. Then the difficulty was with India who did not want to put on the table the idea of ​​creating a monetary background of the BRICS. Thanks to an explosion of the Brazilian president, India gave way and was launched the negotiation of the contingent arrangement of reserve, an idea that it had become fond of. (Dilma exaggerates, but knows how to do certain things…)

Then we had meetings of the same type on several occasions, for example: in St. Petersburg, Russia (2013), in Brisbane, Australia (2014), Antália, Turkey (2015), Hangzhou, China (2016), Germany (2017), in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2018) and in Osaka, Japan (2019) G20 domes.

Notice, reader or reader, that these meetings occurred even in the Temer and Bolsonaro governments, less inclined to attribute importance to the BRICS. In 2019, Brazil even exercised the presidency of BRICS in the Bolsonaro government.

Will the Lula government fall short?