G7 leaders pledged to donate vaccines and gua …

G7 leaders pledged to donate 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccine to countries with fewer resources and step up fight against climate change, authorized a universal minimum tax on large corporations and agreed to tackle China’s “anti-market” economic practices. After their first face-to-face meeting in almost two years, the heads of state and government of Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom Uni have published an ambitious declaration but with few concrete measures.

“It was an extraordinarily collaborative and productive summit”, celebrated the President of the United States Joe biden, before heading to Windsor Castle, where he was greeted by a guard of honor and had tea with Queen Elizabeth II before leaving for Brussels. On his first international tour as president, Biden and other G7 leaders used summit to reaffirm their alliance after former President Donald Trump’s conflicted tenure.

“The United States is back in the business of leading the world alongside nations that share our deepest values.. I think we have made progress in restoring American credibility with our closest friends, ”he said. the democratic president of the town of Newquay in Cornwall. For his part, the British Prime Minister and host of the summit, Boris Johnson, underlined the G7’s commitment to help “the poorest countries of the world to develop in a clean, green and sustainable way”.

Insufficient donation

During the summit, leaders promised give 1 billion doses of covid-19 vaccines to the poorest nations by the end of 2022. Half doses promised by the G7 will be donated by the United States, as Biden announced last week, while $ 100 million will be donated by the UK, Johnson said.

But people did not fail to remind them that eleven times more vaccines are needed to immunize the world against a virus that has already killed 3.7 million people. “I believe that this summit will go down in history as a missed opportunity when we needed 11 billion vaccines and they only offered us a plan for a billion ”, dismissed the former British Labor Prime Minister, Gordon brown.

The leaders of the great powers approved a global minimum tax on multinational corporations and they promised step up the fight against climate change by reducing carbon emissions causing the greenhouse effect and drastically limit government investments in coal in order to protect diversity on the planet.

In another plane The leaders they agreed that work together to challenge China’s “anti-market economic practices” and call on Beijing to respect human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. “We will continue to consult on collective approaches to challenge non-trade practices that undermine the fair and transparent functioning of the global economy,” the G7 document warned.

The summit’s final communiqué in turn called for Russia a put an end to their “destabilizing activities”, including cyber attacks with data theft programs attributed to groups in this country. The 67s urged Moscow to fulfill its international human rights obligations, to investigate “as a matter of urgency” the use of chemical weapons in its territory and to put an end to “its systematic repression of civil society and independent media”.

Looking for your government to get more momentum, Johnson wanted the meeting to fly the flag of a ‘Global Britain’. However, Brexit overshadowed this goal. European Union (EU) leaders and Biden have expressed concern over issues over new trade rules between the UK and the EU which have heightened tensions in Northern Ireland.

Official welcome: at the top and without masks

Several social activists felt that the commitments made were insufficient, and there were even those on social media who criticized the official reception at the Eden Project complex, where Pictures show G7 leaders and Queen Elizabeth II topped and without masks. “No deal to end all new fossil fuel projects, what to do this year if we want to limit the dangerous rise in global temperature, this plan is too short», Assured the director of Green peace UK, Jean Sauven.

For its part Max Lawson, head of inequality policy at the international aid group, noted that “this G7 summit will live in infamy”, and added: “Faced with the biggest health emergency in a century and a climate catastrophe that is destroying our planet, they have not been able to face the challenges of our time.”