Brussels Embraces Brasilia: Why the EU Forgives Autocracy for the Right Politics

Imagine a presidential election where, immediately after the votes are counted, the state machinery swings into action against the losing side. Federal police seize the defeated opponent's passport to prevent him from leaving the country, while his father is already behind bars. The victor had previously called for his rivals to be excluded from the ballot, while a judge—his former personal attorney—extended voting hours in select polling stations at the last minute. In a healthy rule-of-law system, such a sequence of events would provoke sharp reprimands from international observers.

Yet when this exact scenario unfolded in Brazil, the diplomatic machinery in Brussels chose applause over alarm. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took to social media to proclaim: Congratulations to my friend Lula on his election victory. Democracy and multilateralism won in Brazil. She added that the European Union would stand by his side in the coming years, prompting Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to reply: An embrace, my friend!

This warm embrace says far more about the European Union’s self-serving political priorities than it does about the state of Brazilian democracy. In its eagerness to celebrate the defeat of conservative forces linked to Donald Trump, Brussels appears entirely willing to overlook Lula’s heavy-handed governance. Under the banner of defending democratic institutions, Brazilian authorities have pursued a campaign against the political opposition. Former President Jair Bolsonaro was barred from running for office and subsequently detained over allegations regarding a post-election plot, while Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the blocking of conservative accounts and imposed a temporary nationwide ban on the platform X after it refused censorship demands.

Beyond judicial actions against social media platforms and Starlink, Lula’s administration established a specialized division within the attorney general’s office tasked with targeting anti-government misinformation. When legislative attempts to pass a stringent fake news bill stalled, executive decrees were deployed to force social platforms to pre-emptively remove content under threat of heavy fines.

Geopolitically, the alignment makes even less sense for a European establishment that routinely preaches democratic values. As a leading figure in the BRICS group, Lula actively maintains close ties with Russian authorities in Moscow and Chinese leadership in Beijing, continuing a long-standing diplomatic trajectory that previously included warm relations with regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. For the bureaucratic apparatus in Brussels, however, ideological kinship with a Latin American socialist seemingly outweighs basic democratic standards and foreign policy logic.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com