According to the website of Kommersant newspaper on June 30, representatives of the Group of 20 (G20) developed and developing countries held a brainstorming session in Matera, southern Italy, on important development issues under the COVID-19. G20 foreign ministers, meeting face-to-face for the first time in a two-year hiatus, set out a common strategy to overcome the epidemic and its consequences, a document that will be approved at a summit this autumn.
The agenda of the ministerial meeting is markedly different from that of a similar meeting in November 2019, the report said. Less than two years ago, on the eve of a global wave of city closures sparked by the proliferation of the Novel Coronavirus, the G20's key agenda was artificial intelligence and e-commerce. Today, these issues have had to take a back seat to the economic, epidemiological and humanitarian impact of the new reality of COVID-19.
As Italian Foreign Minister Roberto Di Maio, who hosted the meeting, said, the COVID-19 outbreak has uncovered a series of systemic problems in global development, and addressing them will create conditions for "more equitable and inclusive societies."
"The epidemic shows the need to break down borders and create an international response to global challenges," Di Mayo said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the G20's priorities included multilateral diplomacy, global governance, promoting sustainable development in Africa, preventing the outbreak from turning into a food crisis and vaccine protectionism. According to the document, the top priorities are to "restart the World Trade Organization, update common trading rules under its leadership, reform the quota system, equalize the distribution of voting power in the IMF, abolish sanctions, remove illegal trade barriers, and introduce a green corridor for the supply of vaccines and related products".
The WTO report, released Monday in Geneva, shows that the measures taken by the G20 in the face of the epidemic to prevent the rise of global trade protectionism are paying off.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Ivira said that while trade restrictions were easing, the G20 still had a lot of work to do to ensure access to medical supplies and other supplies critical to saving lives. "Trade restrictions are hampering our efforts to increase production and ensure equitable distribution of vaccines, especially in developing countries," she said. Okonjo-Iweala said leadership by the G20 was critical to restoring solid and sustainable economic growth.
For the first time in the history of the G20, the foreign ministers' meeting will include economic development ministers from the world's largest economies in an effort to broaden the scope of the discussion, the report said. In addition, representatives from non-G20 countries, including African countries, were also invited to attend the meeting.
