Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has begun a five-day European tour, arriving in Barcelona on Friday where he was received by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for closed-door talks and the signing of bilateral agreements on gender equality, technology, and entrepreneurship. On Saturday, Lula will join around a dozen progressive world leaders — including the presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay, and South Africa — for the fourth gathering of the "Democracy Forever Forum" (a progressive leaders' summit co-founded by Lula and Sánchez in 2024), focused on multilateralism, inequality, and combating disinformation. The trip, which will also take Lula to Germany and Portugal before he returns home on Tuesday, comes as the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement is set to enter into force provisionally on 1 May after 26 years of negotiations, with Spain, Germany, and Portugal all having been key backers of the deal.
Mosaic News
Brazil's Lula launches five-day European tour with stop in Barcelona[Updated]
Lula arrived in Germany on Sunday morning as the headline guest of Hannover Messe, the world's largest industrial trade fair, which this year has designated Brazil as its guest country of honor. He is set to be received with military honors at Herrenhausen Palace in Hannover alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, with whom he will also hold a private dinner. On Monday, the two leaders will tour the exposition together before Lula opens the 42nd Brazil-Germany Economic Meeting and the third session of High-Level Intergovernmental Consultations — a bilateral mechanism Germany maintains with fewer than ten countries and which Brazil is the only Latin American nation to hold. Agreements are expected to be announced in areas including energy, digital services, and the environment, with environmentalists urging Lula to push Germany to triple its contribution to the Forests Forever Fund to €3 billion, while industry groups are watching for developments on armaments and critical minerals.