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Taormina Summit gathers new leaders of old alliance

By Mahdi Al-Nimr

ROME, May 25 (KUNA) -- Leaders of the seven most advanced economies (G-7) will meet in Taormina city on the east coast of Sicily Island, south Italy, on May 26-27, to discuss the shared concerns amid growing global challenges and profound internal changes.
The 43rd G-7 summit, to be chaired by Italy, will be the first for British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and US President Donald Trump. The four new leaders, alongside with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as well as President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and President of the European Council Donald Tusk, will review the harmony of their common political and economic strategy.
The economic outlook of the old alliance and the relationship between the EU and the United States have been shrouded in mystery since US President Donald Trump took office early this year.
The G-7 developed in 1975 from the then Group of Six (France, the former West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) following the oil crisis that stemmed from the 1973 Middle East war. The French ex-president Valery Giscard d'Estaing invited Canada to join the economic bloc in 1974 to discuss the oil crisis; Canada, the seventh member, attended the summit of the bloc for the first time in 1976 and since then the term G-7 has been used.
The former European Economic Community (EEC) and current EU jumped on the bandwagon in1977.
Russia joined the group in and took part in the summit of 1998 following 1994's G-7 summit in Naples, Italy; this informal arrangement was dubbed the Political 8 (P-8) or G 7+1.
Russia hosted the first P-8 summit in San Petersburg in 2006 but was rejected from the group in 2014 following the crisis in Georgia and the Russian annexation of Crimea.
Consequently, the second P-8 summit, originally planned to take place in Russia's Sochi resort in 2014, was relocated to Brussels as a G-7 summit.
Despite its dwindling clout on the global economy in the recent years vis-أ -vis the G-20, the G-7 still represents 10.3 percent of the world's total population and 32 percent of the world's GDP, accounting for 34.1 percent of the total exports and 36.7 percent of imports.
The group also constitutes the hard core of the G-20; its leaders meet in annual summits to arrange the economic policies of their countries.
The Taormina Summit, to take place two months after the EU summit in Rome, will focus on political and security turmoil in the neighboring Middle East region, and the related global challenges such as immigration and terrorism.
The venue of the summit, locate on a key route of immigration, is selected carefully to shed light on the recurrent tragedies of scores of illegal immigrants who perish while attempting to cross the Mediterranean into Sicily and then proceed to Europe.
This issue will feature prominently in the summit along with the combat against terrorism in the wake of the deadly bomb attack in Manchester three days ago.
Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, the chair of the summit, strongly denounced bombing as "an attack on the whole of Europe." "We are working now to send a strong message against terrorism from the G7 in Taormina," he told reporters on Wednesday.
The G-7 leaders share the concern over the decline of trust in ability of their governments to solve the daily life problems of their citizens and rising nationalist movements in their countries.
The summit, themed 'building the foundations of renewed trust,' will focus on three topics, namely the citizen safety; economic, environmental and social sustainability and reduction of inequalities; and innovation, skills and labor in the age of the next production revolution.
Beside the G-7 leaders, the event will gather, as guests, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi and representatives of the civil society institutions and international organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). (end) mn.gb