Last week a press conference was held by EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen ahead the G7 Summit, which took place in Carbis Bay, Cornwall (UK). The President has introduced some of the main topics concerning the G7 Agenda: the economic impact of the crisis; the global education status; the health issues related to the Pandemic and of course the climate change.
As Von der Leyen said, the European Union managed to tackle the economic fallout from the pandemic much better than compared to the financial crisis in 2008. It was possible because the European Union, after the last big crisis developed effective tools.
On the other hand, the European Union must focus on the other priorities: The European Green Deal, the digitisation and resilience; as the crisis showed off the importance of these priorities. Thus, European Union’s spending goes into investment for green and digital transition and into resilience, especially economic resilience.
At the same time, the President aims to promote the European Union’s values of solidarity and cooperation, especially in this difficult time with poorer countries struggling against the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, at the Summit, the G7 members agreed to donate an additional billions of vaccines to poorer countries.
Finally, the President speech moved on climate issue: the European Union stated that G7 countries should commit to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. At the end of the Summit all the countries have agreed to renovate the Paris Agreements and to halve the emissions of greenhouse gasses by the 2030.