Joe Biden ‘s second as president of the United States. The first, after 16 years, without Angela Merkel at the helm of Germany. The G7 of 2022, under the German presidency, will be “a pioneer of a climate-neutral economy and a just world”. This was announced by the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in his New Year’s speech broadcast by various German radio and television broadcasters on the evening of December 31st . “We are at the beginning of a new decade. We are moving towards a new time ”, a time“ which will be positive if we actively shape it, because it makes the difference that we resolutely take our destiny into our own hands ”.
The exit and resumption of the Covid-19 pandemic and the fight against climate change, together with the taxation of multinationals, had also led the G7 in June 2021, chaired by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Carbis Bay, Cornwall. The meeting of the leaders in 2022 will instead take place from 26 to 28 June where it was already held in 2015: in Schloss Elmau, near the alpine city Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Upper Bavaria.
The spokesman for the German government, Steffen Hebestreit , communicated the place of the three days of work, did not offer details on the participation of countries other than the seven members of the group (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States) and the European Union. The leaders of Australia, South Korea, India and South Africa were also invited under the British presidency, giving life to what Prime Minister Johnson called a “democratic eleven”, which in English is “a Democratic XI” – who knows if with reference to Xi Jinping , president of that China which is, with Russia, the main concern of the club.
Just Russia and China represent one of the first headaches of the new German government, with Chancellor Scholz on a Merkelian line of dialogue and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on a “hawkish” position.
Only two years ago, during the 2019 G7 in Biarritz, France, the then US President Donald Trump had received the support of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte for the request to readmit Russia into the group. Japan declared itself neutral. The other countries opposed.
Presenting the 2022 G7 in an interview with the news agency Dpa, Minister Baerbock explained that “at the moment it is not foreseeable when Russia will be able to return to the group”. The leader of the German Greens called “obviously very painful” that Russia “excluded itself” from the G8 with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. And the current tensions with Ukraine “do not make the situation any easier”.
Like the British G7, the German G7 will also have democracies at the center. Under the motto “act before it’s too late”, explained Baerbock, the foreign ministers of the states participating in the group will discuss “forward-looking multilateralism and resilience of democracies”. For this reason, the minister added, to the G7 consultations the German government intends to invite those countries that not only want to invest in the future, but also “fight for economic development together with common values such as freedom and the rule of law” .
As the rotating president of the G7, Germany will organize two meetings of the foreign ministers of the member countries. In this regard, Baerbock anticipated that he was thinking of “inviting African states to one meeting and dedicating the other to the Pacific region, for example”. In these words there is a difference with the previous G7: the very European focus on Africa.
