Although the end of the pandemic seems still far away, the G7 summit that takes place in Cornwall, in the southeast of England, starting this Friday marks a moment of enormous symbolism as it brings together world leaders for the first time in person since the outbreak of COVID-19.
It is about the reunion of the leaders of the seven most developed economies after two years, and the landscape has little to do with what they met in Biarritz, France in 2019.
Although the end of the pandemic seems still far away, the G7 summit that takes place in Cornwall, in the southeast of England, starting this Friday marks a moment of enormous symbolism as it brings together world leaders for the first time in person since the outbreak of COVID-19.
A pandemic has caused millions of victims around the world and continues to do so, the economy has suffered its worst collapse since World War II and the president of the largest superpower, the United States, is no longer Donald Trump.
The world has accelerated its transformation, which was already frantic before COVID-19, the G7 intends to provide answers to an international scenario in which this forum of rich democracies (they represent 10% of the global population, but 45% of the total wealth) has lost some of its relevance.
Therefore, the solutions that the leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the United States, Canada and Japan – along with the European Union – will seek to the great problems of the world, such as vaccination against COVID-19 or climate change are Above all, a struggle to retain their influence.
Russia and China will appear as the antagonists for the members of the club, since they pose the main threat to liberal democracies and the traveling international order.
Vaccinate the world and not just rich countries
A day before the start of the summit, it was announced that G7 leaders will commit to distribute 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to poor countries with the goal of ending the pandemic by 2022.
“World leaders must announce that they will provide at least 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines by sharing and funding them,” the UK, which holds the rotating presidency of the group, said in a statement.
The United States has already pledged to provide 500 million Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines, including 200 million this year, and French President Emmanuel Macron asked pharmaceutical companies to donate 10% of the doses sold to disadvantaged countries.
The British G7 presidency also wants to ask large laboratories to provide vaccines at cost throughout the pandemic, following the example of AstraZeneca / Oxford.
The US offer has put pressure on the rest of the G7 leaders to share their shipments of vaccines to end the pandemic.
The largest vaccine donation ever made by a single country will cost the United States $ 3.5 billion, but Washington expects no rewards or favors for the decision, a senior Biden administration official told reporters.
It is likely that President Joe Biden’s initiative, ahead of the summit to be held by the Group of Seven Richest Democracies on the Planet, will push other leaders to promise more vaccines, although a large number would still not be enough to inoculate all the world’s poor .
For its part, London announced that it will donate 100 million leftover doses from various laboratories thanks to the advancement of its vaccination program, which has already administered almost 70 million injections.
The experts, despite everything, remember that the dimension of the problem requires going much further than if one wants to prevent new variants from rendering the current vaccines useless. On the horizon, the goal of the international Covax program to provide developing countries with 1.8 billion doses by the beginning of 2022.
A senior official in the Biden administration described the gesture as a “great step forward that will enhance the global effort” with the goal of “bringing hope to all corners of the world.”
“We really want to emphasize that this is fundamentally a singular goal of saving lives,” the official said, adding that Washington does not seek favors in exchange for doses.
To date, vaccination campaigns are closely tied to wealth: the United States, Europe, Israel and Bahrain are far ahead of other countries. A total of 2.2 billion people have already been vaccinated out of a world population of nearly 8 billion, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
US pharmaceuticals Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have agreed to supply the vaccines to the United States, delivering 200 million doses in 2021 and 300 million in the first half of 2022.
The doses, which will be produced at Pfizer’s facilities in the United States, will be delivered at a non-profit price.
“Our partnership with the United States government will help get hundreds of millions of doses of our vaccine to the world’s poorest countries as quickly as possible,” said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
Economic recovery
In parallel to the deployment of vaccination, economic recovery must take place, another of the issues that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to place at the center of the discussions.
Having already assumed the recipe for fiscal expansionism that practically all governments have opted for, London wants to erase Trump’s protectionist legacy with a stroke of the pen and bet on free trade as the best way to reactivate the economies hit by COVID-19.
The signs of overheating, despite everything, are beginning to accumulate: today it was known that year-on-year inflation in the United States stood at 5% in May, the highest figure since August 2008.
The leaders must endorse the agreement that their finance ministers reached to reform the global tax system for large multinationals without the exceptions, such as those that the United Kingdom seeks for its financial giants, ruin the project.
Three that arrive, one that leaves
The great protagonist of the meeting is undoubtedly Biden, who, on his first trip abroad as president, proclaimed as soon as he arrived that “the United States is back” on the international scene.
The US leader, who held his first bilateral meeting today with host Boris Johnson, sees the world at a historic “turning point” and wants to secure the unwavering support of the rich democracies against Beijing and Moscow, even more face to face. to his next meeting in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week.
The rest of the G7 leaders began arriving at the luxurious hotel in Cornwall, in the south-east of England, which is hosting the summit late on Thursday, although most will do so throughout Friday morning.
In addition to Joe Biden, the prime ministers of Japan, Yoshihide Suga, and of Italy Mario Draghi, who had already attended previous meetings in his role as president of the Central Bank, will debut as heads of government of their countries. European.
Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, is just at the opposite extreme, as this will be her last G7 meeting as Germanic ruler. In December, Merkel will step down from power next December, after 16 years as the face of the German government. Not a surprise, in 2018 the line-up chemistry announced that it would not seek a fifth pick.
At 3:00 p.m. local time (9:00 a.m. Mexico City time), Johnson will deliver the speech that will officially open a weekend of conversations that, for the first time in a long time, will take place without the intermediation of a screen.
If the forecasts are not wrong, at the end of the summit, on Sunday, the time for great consensus may have returned at a time when it seems more necessary than ever.
With information from AFP, EFE and Reuters
