What’s happening today?
The agenda for today’s summit features Italy’s president of the council of ministers Giorgia Meloni greeting delegation leaders from 10.30am local time (9.30am BST / 4.30am EDT). There will then be the traditional opening family photo of the delegation leaders.
The discussion sessions set for today are about:
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Africa, climate change and development
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Middle East (with working lunch)
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Ukraine (G7 + Ukraine format)
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Ukraine (G7 format)
There will also be an evening flag ceremony and photo opportunity.
Tomorrow’s sessions include discussion on migration, AI, energy, and the Indo-Pacific and economic security.
Key events
The first arrivals have been Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel representing the European Union, prime minister Rishi Sunak of the UK, and Olaf Scholz, chancellor of Germany.
Photograph: Luca Bruno/AP
Here is a picture of Giorgia Meloni’s arrival at the G7 summit.
While we wait for other G7 leaders to arrive, Reuters is carrying a quick snap that Ukraine and Japan are expected to sign a security agreement later today. At the same time Reuters reports Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Thursday he welcomed a sweeping new set of US sanctions imposed on Russia and praised the measures taken against its defence industrial base.
Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni has just arrived at the venue.
This is the scene at the Borgo Egnazia resort as G7 leaders are scheduled to begin arriving.
Patrick Wintour
Patrick Wintour is in Puglia for the Guardian, and overnight he had this curtain raiser
A dramatic expansion of entities exposed to US sanctions for helping the Russian economy and an EU-led $50bn loan to ease the financial burden on Ukraine will be at the centre of discussions at a summit of the leaders of wealthy G7 nations in Puglia, Italy, starting on Thursday.
The leaders, facing unprecedented challenges from discontented electorates, will be under heightened pressure to provide concrete results as their three days of discussion range across an interlinked agenda encompassing the war in Ukraine, migration, Africa, the Middle East, the climate crisis and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI).
The G7 was once a cloistering of western leaders in informal conversation, but host countries can invite outside guests to join some of the sessions. Italy has thrown open the doors and will welcome Pope Francis; Javier Milei, the populist president of Argentina; Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister; and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will stage a joint press conference with the US president, Joe Biden. The aim is to show the west remains determined to confront Russia’s “arsenal of autocracy”, but is not preoccupied with its own problems.
The meeting is also billed by the US state department as the best opportunity to ease Ukraine’s financial burdens before the US’s presidential elections in November and send a message to Russia of western stamina. As much as feasible the G7 would like its decisions to be Trump-proof.
Read more of Patrick Wintour’s article here: G7 leaders head to Italy for summit as Ukraine and Russia top the agenda
As well as the G7 summit in Italy today, there is also a high profile meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, hosted by the US at Nato’s Headquarters in Brussels.
Going into the event secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said members are set to take tougher action against Russian spies across the alliance in response to a campaign of hostile activities by Moscow that includes acts of sabotage and cyberattacks.
“We have seen several examples of sabotage, of arson attempts, of cyber attacks, of disinformation,” he told reporters, adding Nato defence ministers meeting in Brussels later in the day would “address the Russian campaign of hostile activities.”
Good progress has been made on international efforts to unlock the value of frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine, Reuters reports US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday, adding he hoped for agreement by the time G7 leaders meet.
He said G7 leaders were more unified than ever on major issues, including Chinese industrial overcapacity
Angela Giuffrida
Overnight Angela Giuffrida in Rome teed up the event for us with a look at what it means for Giorgia Meloni:
When Giorgia Meloni met Joe Biden at the White House in March, he played Ray Charles’s Georgia on My Mind as she entered the room. “We have each other’s backs,” he later told reporters, before planting a tender kiss on her forehead as the meeting wrapped up.
The cosy get-together was the clearest sign yet that the Italian prime minister, a chameleon of a communicator, had been able to cultivate warm relations with the US president, who had previously expressed concerns about her Brothers of Italy party’s neofascist history.
As Europe reels from the far-right’s advances in the European parliamentary elections, the pair will reunite among the olive trees of a secluded resort in the southern Italian region of Puglia on Thursday, when Italy hosts the G7 summit. It is an event Meloni intends to use to burnish her image on the international scene, even as her government draws criticism at home for its hardline approach on numerous issues.
Read more of Angela Giuffrida’s piece here: ‘All eyes are on her’: Italy’s far-right chameleon, Giorgia Meloni, prepares to host the G7
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, set out the countries aims for their year holding the presidency of the G7 and hosting the summit in a promo video.
In it she said the G7 had “taken on an irreplaceable role in defending freedom and democracy and managing global challenges.”
She continued:
Italy has taken on this historic responsibility at a particularly complex time. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has challenged the international system based on the rule of law. And the violation of those principles holding the international community together is triggering hotbeds of conflict in various parts of the world.
We will return reiterate our support for Ukraine and we will continue to work towards an end to a war and to achieve a just and lasting peace. We will also address the conflict in the Middle East, and other crisis on the agenda over the course of the year.
We will focus on relations with developing nations and emerging economies, paying particular attention to Africa. We have set ourselves the goal of building an equal cooperation model that rejects a predatory approach and is able to offer benefits for all. That is also why we will be paying great attention to migration issues, the climate-energy nexus and food security.
The Italian presidency will also focus on a challenge that many consider to be the most decisive of our time: artificial intelligence. This technology can create great opportunities, but also huge risks and affect global balances. We are committed to developing governance mechanisms and ensuring that artificial intelligence is both human centred and human controlled.
Here is a glimpse at the press centre that has been set up for the G7 summit in Bari.
What’s happening today?
The agenda for today’s summit features Italy’s president of the council of ministers Giorgia Meloni greeting delegation leaders from 10.30am local time (9.30am BST / 4.30am EDT). There will then be the traditional opening family photo of the delegation leaders.
The discussion sessions set for today are about:
-
Africa, climate change and development
-
Middle East (with working lunch)
-
Ukraine (G7 + Ukraine format)
-
Ukraine (G7 format)
There will also be an evening flag ceremony and photo opportunity.
Tomorrow’s sessions include discussion on migration, AI, energy, and the Indo-Pacific and economic security.
Welcome and opening summary
It is 9am in Borgo Egnazia in the Puglia region, Italy’s south. Welcome to our live coverage of this year’s G7 summit. I am Martin Belam and I’ll be with you for the next while.
G7 leaders are gathering for the first day the summit, hosted by Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and are seeking to seal a deal on using frozen Russian assets to help war-torn Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will join US President Joe Biden and leaders from Italy, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan at the luxury Borgo Egnazia resort in Puglia.
The leaders are hoping to agree on a $50bn loan for Kyiv, secured against the future profits from interest on 300bn euros ($325bn) of Russian central bank assets frozen after the February 2022 invasion, reports Agence France-Presse.
The European Union – where most of the funds are being held – agreed earlier this year to use the profits for Ukraine.
But the idea at the G7 is to use this to provide more, faster help in the form of a massive upfront loan – although key questions such as who issues the debt and who shares the risk are still being hammered out.
The G7 summit opens Thursday morning with a short session on Africa, development and climate change, before turning to the Middle East.
The leaders have already announced their support for a Gaza truce deal outlined by Biden, which would also see the release of hostages taken in Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.
The G7 comprises the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Britain. Russia was suspended from the then-styled G8 indefinitely from 2014 after it unilaterally annexed Crimea.
The European Union participates in all discussions and is represented by the presidents of both the European Council and the European Commission.
The host country traditionally invites outside guests to join some of the sessions. Among those invited are Pope Francis, the King of Jordan as well as the leaders of Ukraine, India, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania, which holds the presidency of the African Union.
More on that in a moment but first, here’s a summary of the latest developments:
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A dramatic expansion of entities exposed to US sanctions for helping the Russian economy will also be at the centre of discussions.
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The meeting is being billed by the US state department as an opportunity to send a message to Russia of western stamina; the G7 would also like to “Trump-proof” its decisions as much as possible ahead of the US election in November.
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The British prime minister Rishi Sunak will announce up to 242m pounds ($309.69m) in bilateral assistance to Ukraine in the G7 summit, his office said on Wednesday, to support immediate humanitarian, energy and stabilisation needs for Ukraine. “We must be decisive and creative in our efforts to support Ukraine and end Putin’s illegal war at this critical moment,” Sunak said ahead of the summit.
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The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has apologised for not attending the G7 Summit in Italy according to the state news agency. Zelenskiy said on Wednesday he had held “productive and energetic” talks with the Crown Prince focusing on this week’s “Peace Summit” in Switzerland and improving bilateral ties.
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On the first evening, the leaders will attend a dinner in their honour in the nearby city of Brindisi. The media centre is in the city of Bari, 80 km (50 miles) from the summit venue.
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The Borgo Egnazia resort, where the summit is being held, Angela Giuffrida writes, is frequented by celebrities such as Madonna and David Beckham: “With its stone villas, replete with almond-filled baskets, and narrow, winding alleys, the resort, which opened in 2010, is modelled on an ancient Puglian village … However, one detail of history the brochures fail to mention is that the land on which the resort stands was razed during Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule to build an airbase.”
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China will be discussed at length, reports Reuters. The leaders are likely to issue a statement expressing concern on Chinese industrial overcapacity, particularly in green energy and technology sectors such as solar panels and electric vehicles.
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The US, EU and Japan have all voiced concern that generous subsidies from Beijing are resulting in a flood of cheap goods hitting the global market, threatening western firms, and will also look at the possibility of imposing additional measures to level the field with heavily subsidised Chinese companies.
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The G7 leaders are likely to express their resolve in addressing the heavy debt burden faced by many emerging market and developing countries, says Reuters, but it is not clear what this commitment will mean in real terms.
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Italy is still pushing for an accord on a global minimum tax on multinationals, even if it said last month that a deal would not be finalised by June as previously planned.
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Many G7 countries are also in political flux, reports Agence France-Presse. Everyone in Puglia is aware this could be Biden’s last G7 summit if he loses to Donald Trump in November US elections. Britain’s Rishi Sunak is tipped to be ousted in July 4 elections, while France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz are both under pressure after gains by the far right in EU elections last weekend.