Scale in Paris – France bets on the negotiation in Venezuela: “The context is different”

First modification: 11/15/2022 – 17:55

As soon as she was elected deputy in June 2022, Eléonore Caroit decided to start moving chips to attract the attention of the French Government to what is happening in Latin America. The vice president of the Foreign Relations Commission of the National Assembly comments that since she was elected five months ago “there is no intervention that she makes, and the interventions are weekly, that she does not talk about Latin America.” Her objective is clear: “I work so that the region once again becomes a focus in the National Assembly.”

In August he attended the inauguration of the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and a month later he traveled to Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica and Peru. One of the files that occupies the deputy of the majority is that of Haiti, “which is experiencing an unprecedented security crisis.”

When we ask him what he can do in favor of his constituents, French from abroad who are often binational, Caroit stresses that it is “very important to talk” about the country; He even pointed out that his “first political request was to be answered about the situation of the French Lyceum in Haiti, which has been in a virtual situation for more than a year.”

President Emmanuel Macron is the first French president since the mid-1970s not to make any official trips to Latin America during his first term. Questioned about this detachment, the deputy specifies “that there is no disinterest or lack of recognition of the importance of Latin America, but rather circumstances that meant that, during the first five years of the French president, including the health crisis, that trip” and warns that “there is a presidential agenda for trips” to the region, without specifying where or when.

Regarding the handshake between Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the leader of the French Executive, within the framework of the COP27 in Egypt, the deputy Caroit affirms that “there is a will of France to play an important role, to bring Venezuela closer to to democracy, elections arrive, and that the opposition and the Government can sit down at a table”. There is “an opening because the context is different,” she affirms without denying “the firm position” that Paris had maintained in relation to Caracas.