The Group of Seven (G7) will begin its 47th summit in the British region of Cornwall on Friday, and plans to tackle a wide range of pressing issues, including climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.
The summit will take place in the Cornish seaside resort town of Carbis Bay. Attendees will include the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council.
The leaders of Australia, South Korea, India, and South Africa will participate as guests, with the Indian prime minister joining via teleconference.
The get-together will last from Friday to Sunday. This will be the first offline G7 summit in almost two years.
The summit is expected to cover a broad range of issues, such as those related to economic recovery, sustainable growth, trade, promotion of a green and digital economy, social inclusion, and closing the gender gap.
The participants will discuss ways to promote equal access to COVID-19 vaccines and strengthen global health security, with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson planning to use the summit to urge his colleagues to commit to vaccinating the entire world against COVID-19 by the end of 2022.
The Cornwall summit will also focus on climate change ahead of the United Nations’ COP15 conference on biodiversity in October and the COP26 conference on climate change in November.
The summit’s foreign policy agenda will include relations with such countries as Russia, Belarus, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iran, and Libya. With regard to Russia, a high-placed German source has told Sputnik that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, a bone of contention between the US and its European allies, will not be discussed at the summit.
The summit is also expected to serve as an opportunity for those in attendance to hold bilateral talks on the sidelines.
The United Kingdom, which holds the G7 presidency in 2021, has its policy priorities in the global recovery from the pandemic, facilitating free and fair trade, dealing with climate change, and safeguarding the Earth’s biodiversity. This will be the seventh time the UK hosts a G7 summit.
Source: Sputnik
