Workers put the finishing touches on lights installed for the patron saint’s festival in Fasano, near Borgo Egnazia, Italy, Wednesday, June 12, 2024. A Group of Seven summit aimed at solidifying support for Ukraine opened Thursday under a starkly different political climate than a few days earlier, with European Parliament elections rattling the leaders of France and Germany and emboldening Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Gregorio Borgia/AP
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Gregorio Borgia/AP
BARI, Italy — The Group of Seven summit opened on Thursday with an agreement on a U.S. proposal to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan secured by frozen Russian assets, a move that Kiev strongly supported amid a rightward shift in European politics.
Diplomats confirmed the agreement had been reached before the leaders arrived in southern Italy for the three-day summit, which will also see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy sign a separate bilateral security pact with U.S. President Joe Biden.
Beyond the Ukraine war, Pope Francis will become the first pope to address a G7 summit, adding a dash of prestige and moral authority to the annual gathering, held this year in Italy’s sun-drenched Puglia region. The pontiff will speak on Friday about the promises and perils of artificial intelligence, but is also expected to renew his appeal for a peaceful end to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
The G7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Host Italy has invited several African leaders, including Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Kenyan President William Ruto and Tunisian President Kais Saied, to promote Italy’s Africa vision. Other guests include Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, newly elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
With Biden, British Chancellor Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron all facing elections in the coming months, the G7 was under pressure to do what they could while the status quo lasts.
Russian assets frozen for aiding Ukraine
The U.S. proposal includes using profits from about $260 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets, most of which are held by the European Union, to help Ukraine and providing a $50 billion loan from the U.S. government to Kiev, secured by windfall profits from the frozen funds.
French officials told reporters on Wednesday that the political decision had been made by leaders but that technical and legal details of how the assets would be used still needed to be worked out. The issue is complicated because if Russian assets are ever unfrozen — say, if the war ends — the windfall would not be able to be used to repay debts, and burden-sharing agreements with other countries would be needed.
On the eve of the summit, Washington voiced its strong support for Ukraine and expanded sanctions against Russia targeting Chinese companies that support Russia’s military.
Europe’s New Political Chessboard
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni comes to the meeting with support at home and abroad after his far-right party garnered even stronger support in the weekend’s European Parliament elections than it did in the 2022 elections that elected him as Italy’s first female prime minister. Italy, known for frequent changes of government, is currently in the unusual position of being the EU’s most stable large country.
Leaders of the other two G7 EU member states, Germany and France, did not fare much better, shaken by the strong showings of far-right parties in the polls: President Macron called for early elections, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saw his far-right Alternative for Germany party win against his own Social Democrats.
As a result, analysts say Meloni will be able to focus the three-day conference on his key priorities as he further solidifies his role on the world stage. In a reported sign of his flexing his far-right muscles, Meloni’s office denied media reports that Italy was seeking to water down language on abortion access in the final communique.
“While the recent election results are unlikely to fundamentally change the focus of the upcoming G7 summit, a victory in this election gives Prime Minister Meloni further leverage to position this as essentially a ‘Mediterranean summit,'” said Nick O’Connell, vice president of the Atlantic Council.
This includes promoting immigration policy, as Meloni seeks to use his plan for a non-exploitative relationship with Africa to promote development while at the same time curbing illegal migration to Europe.
Italy, which has been Europe’s migration epicenter for decades, has promoted the Mattei Plan, which includes pilot projects in education, health, water, sanitation, agriculture and energy infrastructure, as a way to create jobs and opportunities in Africa and discourage young people from making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.
The Pope and Artificial Intelligence
Pope Francis called for an international treaty to ensure that AI is developed and used ethically, and while he acknowledged the potential that AI poses, he also highlighted the grave, existential threat it poses.
The Pope will take this campaign to the developed world as war rages on multiple fronts. One of his biggest concerns is the use of AI in the arms sector, a topic the Jesuit pope has frequently focused on, with the pope even calling traditional arms manufacturers “merchants of death.”
But Pope Francis is also concerned about what AI means for the poorest and most vulnerable: technology that could determine things like the trustworthiness of a mortgage applicant, an immigrant’s right to political asylum, or the likelihood of reoffending for someone previously convicted of a crime.
The 87-year-old Pope said he would reiterate his call for peace as he holds six bilateral meetings between the leaders on the sidelines of the summit.
Where is it happening?
The G7 summit is taking place in a sprawling luxury resort, a fictional town modelled on the whitewashed medieval villages of Puglia that looks like a theatre set, but was actually built only in 2010.
Next to the actual archaeological park, Borgo Egnasia has narrow streets, villas, restaurants and a square with a clock tower. A favourite with celebrities, it’s off-limits to outsiders during the summit.
No such five-star hotel awaits the more than 2,000 police and police constabulary deployed to guard the area: on Wednesday authorities seized a decommissioned cruise ship housing them in the port of Brindisi after police unions complained about unacceptable hygiene conditions on board.
As with other G7 summits, anti-global, anti-war and environmental activists have been protesting around the summit site, but far from where the leaders will be meeting. One group is organizing a “Dinner for the Poor” on Friday night to speak about “peace, people’s rights and against the Big 7 who claim to decide the fate of the world and the planet.”
