Jon Van Housen and Mariella Radaelli :
It was a noble idea: Heads of industrialised nations would gather in Sicily just 200km from the coast of Africa and consider the forces driving the mass migration that is creating a refugee crisis in Europe. The announcement was made last year following the G7 summit in Tokyo by Italy’s then-president Matteo Renzi.
Historic Taormina would serve as the setting for the G7 meeting in 2017, with African leaders invited to join discussions on how to stop the flow of migrants. Since the crisis began, around 10,000 have drowned in the Mediterranean, and Italian borders are awash with refugees.
Much has changed in the last one year. Renzi is no longer in power. Four of his colleagues have also left, which leaves Germany’s Angela Merkel and Shinzo Abe of Japan as veterans from the last meeting in Tokyo. And instead of the ancient seaside town serving as a sublime setting to contemplate the deeper issues at play, Taormina was turned into a fortress by security-obsessed Americans.
Part of US President Donald Trump’s first foray into personal international diplomacy, the G7 in Taormina on May 26 and 27 was more atmospherics than action. Concerned European leaders got a better look at this curious American creation during the summit. After days of negotiations, they could not conceal their dismay with Trump’s changeable policies and behaviour.
High on the agenda were discussions on climate change and trade agreements, which Trump had vowed to upend during his election campaign. Though staff members from all G7 nations laboured through the night of May 26 to craft the usual final communique of solidarity, the US position on the Paris climate accord and international trade remained indecisive.
Gary Cohn, a White House economic adviser placed in the role of spokes-man for the US president at the G7, said Trump’s views on climate change “are evolving”.
“He came here to learn, he came here to get smarter,” said Cohn with-out irony. Yet though Merkel and the rest of the G-7 leaders talked intensively with Trump about the climate accord, the summit concluded without the US agreement. The US president later tweeted that he would make up his mind on the accord “in a week”.
Trump had already received pointed feedback on the environment during his visit to Italy – from an elevated source: Pope Francis. During the 30-minute meeting on May 24, the pontiff gave the president an encyclical entitled “Laudato Sì: On Care for Our Common Home” that he has ad-dressed to “every person living on this planet”. The encyclical is a manifesto against environmental degradation and social inequity. It says exploitation of the planet and poverty are two sides of the same coin. During the meeting the Pope also talked with Trump about religious tolerance, freedom of religion and the undesirability of walls. He then gave the US president an olive branch medallion, “so you can be an instrument of peace”, said Francis.
“I will listen to your words,” Trump replied, according to Italian media sources. Trump’s awkwardness was lightened by his wife and daughter, who added an element of grace. Later Melania Trump visited the Os-pedale Bambin Gesù, a hospital dedicated entirely to the children of Rome and popes, while Ivanka visited the Comunità di Sant’Egidio, a favourite of Pope Francis, who often praises the community for its work in combating human trafficking and caring for the poor and elderly.
As planned, African leaders attended the G7 in Taormina, but full discussions on the issue had already been shelved before the summit even began.
Luca Da Fraia, head of the Italian NGO Interaid, said Italy proposed a standalone statement on migration to be endorsed by G7 leaders, but the US offered its own version before the meeting that proved unacceptable to the Italians
.Aldo Cazzullo, columnist at the Corriere della Sera newspaper, notes that “every attempt was made to exorcise the image of the American against the rest of the world, so the G7 gave birth to vague conclusions without the commitments needed to stop the desertification of Africa and migration”.
“No steps forward, but rather some steps back,” said Cazzullo.
In the end, it seems the summit was largely a meet-and-great gathering for leaders to be feted and know each other. In addition to Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, and UK Prime Minister Theresa May are all fairly new on the job.
May left the summit early and hurried back to the UK to deal with the aftermath of the Manchester terrorist attack as Britain remains on the highest-level alert. One thing all G7 leaders agreed upon in their final communique was the importance of the fight against terrorism.
The final G7 declaration also urges Internet social media providers to “act urgently in developing and sharing new technologies and tools to improve automatic detection of content promoting incitement to violence”.
But as the British prime minister returned to a security crisis while planes, soldiers and warships patrolled Taormina, it seemed little had been done to address the root causes driving the displaced and disenchanted.
(Jon Van Housen and Mariella Radaelli are editors at the Luminosity Italia news agency in Milan, ItalyMore)
