G7 leaders meeting in Japan today and tomorrow are expected to grapple with issues ranging from migration and the Syrian conflict to the economic slowdown, but their talks will likely be overshadowed by US President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima.
The G7 summits - bringing together the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and the European Union - are seen as a chance to set global priorities and seek a common approach on key challenges.
During a recent visit to Brussels, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the G7 should “act in unison” to defend their common values.
But each leader will be coming to the Japanese province of Ise-Shima with different baggage, as rare instability looms over the club’s most solid members.
For Obama, it will be his last G7 summit, ahead of elections in November that many fear could bring a new isolationist president to the White House in the form of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is weeks away from a referendum on his country’s future in the EU that is being nervously watched from Brussels and beyond, while his European partners are grappling with the challenges of migration and terrorism.
Migration is “one of the defining global challenges of our century”, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said during Abe’s visit.”The international community must do its fair share,” he added.
However, the issue is seen as a low priority for the host Japan, which took in just 27 refugees out of 7,500 applicants last year.
Nonetheless, analysts see the summit as a chance for Abe to boost his country’s role internationally and infuse the G7 format with new energy.
Earlier this month, he toured Europe laying out his priorities, even stopping off to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country was expelled from the club of leading nations in 2014 over Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
Meanwhile, the EU hopes the summit will give new impetus to free trade talks.
The bloc is stuck in tough negotiations with the US and Japan, while public opinion is swinging against the deals, amid fears that trade liberalization exposes domestic industry to cheap competition from abroad.
The issue has been underscored by an international spat with China over its steel exports, with a global oversupply in steel driving down prices and leading to job cuts.
The issue is expected to make it onto the G7 agenda, with China - which is not at the table - accused of exacerbating the problem with unfairly cheap exports and steel sector subsidies.
But many will focus on events after the two-day summit ends tomorrow, when Obama will become the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, one of two Japanese cities that Washington dropped atomic bombs on during World War II.
