(Bari) The absence of the right to abortion in the G7 commitments, attributed to the resistance of Italy, the host country, on this subject with high symbolic value, has become the main point of friction at the summit, against a backdrop of tensions between Giorgia Meloni and Emmanuel Macron.
According to the draft final declaration consulted on Friday by AFP, the leaders of the seven richest democracies on the planet make no direct reference to the right to abortion.
A significant change compared to the last summit in Hiroshima, Japan, in 2023, when the press release displayed their commitment to “access to safe and legal abortion and post-abortion care services”.
The subject gave rise to a standoff behind the scenes during negotiations between the delegations.
The United States, France and the European Union, in particular, wanted to keep this wording. Paris even wanted to strengthen it.
Blockage in the face of the Italian veto: the file goes back to the level of leaders, and the Italian Prime Minister, at the head of an ultraconservative party and who holds the rotating presidency of the G7, even categorically refuses to write the wording in black and white again approved last year.
“We reiterate our commitments from the Hiroshima Leaders’ Declaration to universal, adequate, affordable and quality access to health services for women, including sexual and reproductive rights and health comprehensively for all.” , confines itself to saying the draft text consulted by AFP in Borgo Egnazia, in Puglia.
No trace of the right to “abortion”.
“We were defending what was agreed in Hiroshima where the text was more explicit, but it was not possible to reach an agreement,” explained a senior EU official. However, he considered it “important” that “the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights” be mentioned.
On the rights of LGBTQ communities, the Italian G7 draft text is also less exhaustive than that of 2023, even if it is clearly stated that there is “deep concern about the decline in the rights of women, girls and people LGBTQIA” across the world, especially in times of crisis.
The dispute came to light in Puglia on Thursday, in the form of a face-to-face between Emmanuel Macron, champion of centrist progressivism, and Giorgia Meloni, from a post-fascist group.
Asked by the press about the absence of the word “abortion”, the French president said “regret it” while “respecting” a policy which derives from the “sovereign choice” of the Italians.
And while he is engaged in a high-risk electoral battle after having called early legislative elections and threatened to have to cohabit in a month with a far-right government, he seemed to make an example of this “battle of values” which he put at the center of his campaign.
“We don’t have the same choices. France has integrated this right of women to abortion, the freedom to dispose of one’s body in its Constitution,” he said. “It’s not the same sensitivities that there are in your country today,” he told an Italian journalist, nor “a vision that is shared across the political spectrum. »
This outing angered the Italian Prime Minister whose far-right government passed a law, passed in Parliament, to authorize anti-abortion activists to access public health system consultation clinics for women considering resorting to a voluntary interruption of pregnancy. pregnancy (abortion).
“It’s a serious mistake” to “conduct an electoral campaign using a valuable forum like the G7,” she retorted to Emmanuel Macron. While rejecting a “bad faith” controversy, since the declaration refers to the text concluded in Hiroshima.
The clash made the front page of the entire Italian press on Friday, a sign in their eyes of the growing tensions between a French president weakened by the defeat of his camp in the European elections and a head of the Italian government who, on the contrary, emerged strengthened .
The G7 meeting in Italy calls on China to stop supplying weapons components to Russia at war with Ukraine, according to the draft final declaration seen by AFP, which also promises to help Kyiv “for as long as necessary.”
“We call on China to stop transferring […] weapons components and equipment that supply the Russian defense sector,” demand the heads of state and government.
“We stand united in supporting Ukraine’s fight for its freedom and reconstruction for as long as necessary,” say the heads of state and government, who received Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday and promised him 50 billion dollars from income from frozen Russian assets.
This $50 billion loan for Kyiv will be guaranteed by future interest earned on fixed Russian assets, which amount to €300 billion generating up to three billion euros in revenue per year.
“In the presence of President Zelensky, we decided to make available approximately $50 billion leveraging extraordinary revenues from frozen Russian assets, which sends an unequivocal signal to [Russian] President Vladimir Putin,” the leaders say in their draft declaration.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called the freezing of Russian assets in the West and their use to help Ukraine resist Russia “theft” and vowed to retaliate.
After having advocated a pure and simple confiscation of Russian assets, legally risky, the United States had aligned itself with the Europeans’ position of using only the interest generated by the frozen assets.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the G7, was keen to emphasize on Thursday after the conclusion of the agreement: “We are not talking about the confiscation of these assets, but of the interests that accumulate in over time”.
The G7 affirms its “intent” to direct these “funds towards Ukraine’s military, budgetary and reconstruction needs, within the limits of our respective legal systems and administrative requirements.”
The frozen Russian assets are mainly in the European Union: around 185 billion euros were frozen by Euroclear, an international money depository established in Belgium. This gives preponderant weight to Europe over the use of Russian assets.
The rest is shared in particular between the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.