Macron charms Brazil's Lula with submarines

The Tonelero is the third of four conventionally-propelled submarines agreed in a $10 billion deal signed by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Lula in 2008.

That pact also included building a nuclear-powered submarine, the Álvaro Alberto, which has seen delays and disagreements over the transfer of nuclear technology.

Macron said he wanted to open “a new chapter” in the project, adding: “You want it, France will be at your side.”

“We have never shared our so much of our know-how as we did with Brazil, and we are proud to have done so," Macron said.

Lula said: “Brazil wants the know-how, wants nuclear technology, not to go to war.”

Brazilian authorities have signaled that France is now more willing to collaborate on the nuclear submarine. “Perhaps there was resistance in the past,” Maria Luisa Escorel de Moraes, secretary for Europe and North America at the Brazilian foreign ministry, told reporters last week.