Eight months after Beirut’s deadly port explosion, the French initiative seems a lost opportunity in need of resurrection. Post-blast, French President Emmanuel Macron was welcomed in the streets of Beirut on August 6, 2020, while overseeing damages, which was followed by a second visit less than a month later, on August 31, 2020. During his visit, he promised to initiate talks with donors and to come back to Lebanon to bring forward an initiative that would help alleviate Lebanon’s woes and unlock the Conference for Economic Development and Reform through Enterprises (CEDRE) money that had been once considered as a main pillar of Lebanon’s future economic revival. The CEDRE conference was held on April 6, 2018, in Paris, and had pledged USD 11 billion of infrastructure projects (The pledges include $10.2 billion in loans and $860 million in grants), on the condition of political and financial fiscal reforms: these never
