Igor Kovalenko/EPA
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at COP29
The French will boycott the climate discussion event after the president of Azerbaijan called Macron a colonialist. In the discussion of the Paris agreement, there are no signs of Parisians.
The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyevsaid this Wednesday that France and the Netherlands were “neocolonialists“, a fact that is related to climate change.
“The so-called overseas territories France and the Netherlands, especially in the Caribbean and the Pacific, are among those most affected” by pollution, said the Azerbaijani.
Aliyev accused France of causing “environmental degradation” in these territorieswhich he described as “colonies,” referring to nuclear tests carried out in French Polynesia and Algeria.
The president of Azerbaijan also accused Emmanuel Macron’s government of being responsible for violent explosions that occurred in New Caledonia earlier this year.
According to , the , French overseas territory, “touches a sensitive nerve in France”. In May, 13 people died on the island in clashes with police following a constitutional change supported by Paris and condemned by activists.
The French didn’t like the tone, and ended up deciding to take action: boycott cop29. Macron, who would not be present at the event, but was now the French Minister for Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacherwho opposed going to Baku.
“After discussion and agreement with the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, I will not go to Baku next week”, he announced, quoted by Politico, also referring to the Azerbaijani president’s statements as “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable”.
It is therefore the first year since 2015, when France helped develop the Paris Agreement which aims to stop global warming, in which France does not participate in a COP.
As relations between the two countries already have, since France, last year, decided to militarily support Azerbaijan’s great rivals, the Armenians.
But Also with the Dutch, the reference did not go down well. A spokesman for the Dutch Foreign Ministry, cited by Politico, “categorically” rejected the accusations and criticized the “unfounded views on repression” displayed by Aliyev.
Pannier-Runacher, the French minister, also described the COP29 host country support for fossil fuelswhich constitute a large part of the country’s exports, as “unacceptable”.
At COP29, There have been many absencesbut also at an event that wants, above all, to reduce global warming. As if the weather in Baku wasn’t hot enough.
