47th G7 Summit

The Group of Seven, more commonly known as G7, is an intergovernmental constitutional forum. This group was founded in 1975. It is an organization of leaders from the largest economies in the world. These economies are; Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, U.S., and the United Kingdom. In 2014, Russia was suspended from the summit. It seems that the first meeting was the idea of the French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

This summit is held over 3 days. This year, it was held from 11-13 June.

This summit is held every year so that the heads of a state or government can discuss serious issues on the global stage, propose different ideas and coordinate amongst themselves. More often than not, the main topics of discussion are the global economy, international security, etc. It seems to be expected, however, that the topic that was the main point of discourse this year was the Covid-19 pandemic - mainly the distributions of vaccines and how and when we can expect recovery from it.

Since 1975, this group has met yearly on the site of the summit, to talk through the economic policies, security issues, etc. The finance ministers of the G7 meet around four times of the year at stand-alone conferences. If not four, these ministers, at the very minimum, meet up biannually. This twice-yearly meeting has been going on since 1987.

Not long ago, in 1996, an initiative was set in motion for HIPC or the 42 heavily indebted poverty-stricken nations.

Just one year later, $300 million was provided by the G7 towards the effort to construct a containment for the reactor meltdown at Chernobyl.

In 1999, the forum decided to increase the direct involvement of their summit. They seemed particularly interested in the “management of the international monetary network”. They worked through few other forums, thereby encouraging interchange between both emerging market countries and significant industrial nations.

Approximately 13 years back, in 2008, the G7 visited Washington, D.C. twice to discuss the international financial crisis at the time.

In 2014, many actions were taken by the G7. On March 24, the G7 called an emergency meeting. This was the first meeting that was neither taking place in a nation of a member nor having the host leader in participation.

This yearly summit of the G7 is attended by all the heads of the governments that are participating. The member nation that is holding the presidency in G7 is the one that is responsible for all the organizing that needs to take place. In average terms, each country is to host the summit once every 7 years.

This year, the summit was hosted at Carbis Bay, St Ives, Cornwall, England. The host was the United Kingdoms and the Host figure was Boris Johnson.

The leaders/nations that participated this year are as follows:

1. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

2. Emmanuel Macron, President of France

3. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany

4. Mario Draghi, Prime Minister of Italy

5. Yoshihide Suga, Prime Minister of Japan

6. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Host)

7. Joe Biden, President of the United States

8. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European commission

9. Charles Michel, President of the European council

The guests that attended are as follows:

1. Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia 2. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India 3. Moon Jae-in, President of South Korea 4. Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa.

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