Former Austrian Foreign Minister Kneissl Explains Why Macron Is Knocking on the Door of the BRICS

Aug. 17, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—In an interview with TASS published today, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl explained why French President Emmanuel Macron is now knocking on the door of the BRICS after years of disinterest, including from the European Union. Kneissl said that when she assumed office in 2017, she asked her colleagues to provide all documents on how Austria or the EU thought of 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.

She went on:

“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.”

She pointed to the remarks by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin at the Aug. 15 Moscow International Security Conference, who had said the BRICS acronym sounds like “brick” in English, and that its member states, which will grow bigger and stronger “these are indeed the building blocks in the foundation of a truly free and equal world.” “What Mr. Naryshkin said earlier, I liked it,” Kneissl told TASS. “If I understood Mr. Naryshkin correctly, it is being discussed that the organization is open for a much larger membership.”

In June, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Kneissl was announced as the new director of the St. Petersburg-based Geopolitical Observatory for Russia’s Key Issues, or GORKI center, that deals with strategic and economic policies.