In an interview with TASS, former Federal Minister for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria Karin Kneissl explained why French President Emmanuel Macron is now knocking on the door of the BRICS after years of disinterest by the European Union.
Kneissl said that when she assumed office, she asked her colleagues to provide all documents on how Austria or the EU sees the BRICS. “There was not a single paper, not a single one. And this is what I call Eurocentrism, you see, because this was absent during debates in the EU. And it is interesting that they were simply not interested in this, and now Macron is knocking on the door, seeking to get in, saying: ‘May I come to the party, please? No, I have not actually been invited, but I would like to become a part of the party.’ We observe a total transformation of geopolitics, international relations, which also affects institutions,” she said.
Referring to the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, etc., she said, “Now these institutions are located elsewhere — it is the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — it’s like a Eurasian Union now. For decades and decades, many European capitals, the European Union simply paid no attention to it, they disregarded it. And the BRICS is very lucrative economically as well, when we are talking about transformation of the currency basket, for example.”
