ROME: Leaders of the G7 wealthy nations gather in southern Italy this week against the backdrop of global and political turmoil, with boosting support for Ukraine top of the agenda.
US President Joe Biden, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are among the Group of Seven leaders heading to the luxury resort of Borgo Egnazia in Puglia for the June 13-15 summit.
It comes at a sensitive time, with wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza and with Biden, Macron and Britain’s Rishi Sunak all facing elections in the coming weeks and months.
With an eye to the global challenges, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the host, has also invited around a dozen non-G7 heads of government, from Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to India’s Narendra Modi.
Pope Francis will also fly in on Friday to talk about artificial intelligence.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend a discussion Thursday on Russia’s war on his country, now into its third year, where he will again press for more help from Western allies.
G7 leaders hope to agree a deal on using the profits from the interest on $325 billion (300 billion euros) of frozen Russian central bank assets to help Kyiv.
The idea is to use the profits as collateral for a loan of up to $50 billion, but there is still debate over who would issue the debt as well as a raft of technical issues — including what would happen if the assets were unfrozen in the event of peace.
John Kirton, director of the University of Toronto’s G7 Research Group, said he expected an agreement.
“This issue has been the signature test of the summit’s performance on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, so the G7 leaders will not do too little here,” he told AFP.
The leaders are also expected to discuss their concerns over China’s support for Russia’s military expansion.
While the summit is officially three days, the sessions end on Friday, with Zelensky and some other leaders heading Saturday to a conference on Ukraine in Switzerland.
Biden will not attend, instead sending Vice President Kamala Harris.
The summit of G7 leaders — including Germany’s Olaf Scholz and Canada’s Justin Trudeau — comes at a “particularly difficult moment on the international stage,” an Italian government source said.
The Hamas-Israel war is now in its ninth month, with the conflict to be addressed at the summit as part of a wider discussion on the Middle East. G7 leaders last week endorsed a proposed peace deal.
Tensions in the Indo-Pacific will also feature on the agenda in Puglia, as will economic security, including rising trade tensions with China on green technologies.
Non-G7 guests will join an “outreach session” on Friday afternoon.
They were set to include Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Erdogan and Emirati President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — whose country holds the rotating G20 presidency this year — Argentina’s Javier Milei, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and representatives from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have also been invited.
All the guests are invited to a dinner Friday night at the Borgo Egnazia luxury hotel complex built in the style of a traditional village, an evening which will also include a short artistic show.
With security to be extremely tight, the venue is far away from protesters and journalists, with the media center located some 60 kilometers away in Bari.
Migration and relations with Africa are two priorities for Meloni for the summit, and she has invited leaders from Kenya, Algeria and the African Union.
On climate change, G7 environmental ministers have already committed in April to phase out unabated coal-fired power plants by the mid-2030s — though they left some wiggle room.
The Group of Seven is a political forum of largely like-mind democracies, but their economic weight is not what it once was — and without China, some question its relevance.
It could be the last G7 summit for several participants.
Biden is up for re-election in November, while Britain’s Sunak faces voters on July 4, when his Conservatives are expected to lose power.
Macron is also facing trouble at home: on Sunday he called snap legislative elections after his centrist alliance was routed by the far right in weekend European Parliament elections.
Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party, by contrast, came out top in the vote in Italy.
G7 leaders gather in Italy for talks dominated by Ukraine
https://arab.news/gepac
G7 leaders gather in Italy for talks dominated by Ukraine
- Pope Francis will also fly in on Friday to talk about artificial intelligence
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend a discussion on Thursday
Obamacare health subsidy to end as US Senate rejects dueling remedies
- Senate rejects Republican and Democratic health care proposals
- Democratic plan sought subsidy extension; Republicans offered to boost health savings accounts
WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Thursday rejected competing proposals by Republicans and Democrats to address a looming health care crisis, leaving some 24 million Americans vulnerable to significantly higher insurance premiums beginning on January 1 when a federal subsidy expires.
Barring any late breakthroughs, Congress will begin an end-of-year holiday recess sometime next week and not return until January 5, after new premiums are locked in for those who had relied on the Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidy.
In back-to-back votes largely along party lines, Democrats and Republicans blocked each other’s bill.
The House of Representatives might attempt to pass some sort of legislation next week, which has not yet been unveiled. Even if it were to pass, Senate Democrats, and possibly some Republicans, would oppose it and they could use their votes to kill that effort.
“After today’s vote, the American health care crisis is 100 percent on their shoulders,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said of Republicans.
Senate Republican leader John Thune dismissed the Democratic bill as “a political messaging exercise” and said “Republicans are ready to get to work. I’m not sure yet that Democrats are interested.”
The bitter battle in Congress has left some Americans uncertain over renewing their health insurance under the federal health care program.
The percentage of returning customers in the Obamacare exchanges is slightly down from a year ago, with the government reporting 19.9 percent of people enrolled this year opting to renew their plans so far, down from 20.5 percent this time last year.
The Republican bill by US Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Mike Crapo of Idaho would have sent up to $1,500 to individuals earning less than 700 percent of the federal poverty level — about $110,000 for an individual or $225,000 for a family of four in 2025. Those funds could not be used for abortion or gender transition procedures and would require verification of beneficiaries’ immigration or citizenship status — provisions Democrats reject.
The Democratic proposal on the subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, would have extended COVID-era subsidies for three years to keep insurance premiums from soaring for many. Without action by Congress, those premiums could more than double in cost on average, according to KFF, a health policy organization.
Sixty votes were needed to pass either measure in a Senate that Republicans control 53-47. Four Republicans voted for the Democratic proposal. No Democrats backed the Republicans’ bill.
President Donald Trump has largely sat out the brawl over health care, although he ultimately embraced the Cassidy-Crapo approach.
At Thursday’s bipartisan Congressional Ball, Trump predicted Republicans and Democrats would work together on health care. But he advocated for the Republican bill.
“We have an idea that rather than making these massive payments... insurance companies, we make beautiful big payments directly to the people, and they buy their own,” Trump said in remarks at the black-tie event at the White House.
The $1,500 payments in the Republican bill were meant to cover some of the out-of-pocket costs that people in the “Bronze” or “Catastrophic” categories — the lower-cost Obamacare plans — need to pay before their insurance kicks in.
However, it is far below the plans’ deductibles, meaning that even after that payment, a patient would be on the hook for up to $7,500 in out-of-pocket medical expenses before their insurance would start to pay for part of their care.
Those costs can rack up quickly for people with lower-cost plans, with a visit to a US emergency room costing between $1,000 and $3,000, while an ambulance ride can cost anywhere from $500 to over $3,500.
With 2026 congressional elections coming into focus, many Republicans are nervous about the prospect of stiff premium increases hitting every state, including many that backed Trump’s 2024 re-election. Polling indicates voters could mostly punish Republicans, who control Congress and the White House.
Republican US Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a state that Trump carried by 18 points in his 2024 re-election, said his constituents have been telling him, “We can’t afford our premiums now, let alone if they would go up by 50 or 100 percent.”
Insurance companies warned customers of the rising premiums in the new year, and Democrats argued there was not enough time to do anything but a clean extension of the tax credits they sought.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found Americans back a health care subsidy continuation. Some 51 percent of respondents — including three-quarters of Democrats and a third of Republicans — said they support extending the subsidies. Only 21 percent said they were opposed.
Moderate Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania is spearheading a bipartisan bill to extend the subsidy through 2027. He is hoping to garner enough support to circumvent leadership and force votes on the measure by the full House.
