Economist Jeffrey Sachs plainly stated that the last G7 summit was a waste of resources. He believes the G7 should be discontinued as it is no longer representative nor effective as a policy forum. He noted that G7 countries dropped to 31% of global GDP in 2021 compared to 51% in 1980, whereas Asian developing countries moved from 9% up to 33%.
Mysterious and transparent, cautious but daring, cordial yet ferocious. In a few weeks’ time, Angela Merkel will bow out, leaving behind some unanswered questions about her true personality. She is Germany’s eight Chancellor since the birth of the Bundesrepublik. In the last seventy years, the Bundesliga counted only eight trainers, while the Berlin Philarmonic contented itself with seven directors. For Germans, stability is not an abstract idea, it’s a value to live by.
On the 7th of June 2021, Italian authorities announced they had dismantled a far-right group, called Ordine Ario Romano (“Aryan Roman Order”).
The Sahel region is the theatre for one of the most significant developments in Italian foreign policy in the last decade. As a consequence of the intersection between external shocks, domestic pressures, and internal reorganisations, Italy is testing new approaches, instruments, and strategies in the Sahel to further its national interest, which is understood as much in terms of national security as domestic stability and international status.
Italy’s new Prime Minister Draghi has made it clear that his government will be reformist and pro-European. In his remarks to Parliament when seeking a vote of confidence he laid out his government’s intention to focus on the structural issues that have dogged Italy’s economy over the last two decades.
Italy-China relations have experienced significant shifts since the beginning of President Xi Jinping’s mandate, partly following the differing “Chinese views” of governing coalitions over those years, and a widespread outdated perception of the need to adapt bilaterally to the so-called “China’s rise”. Those swings have resulted in a very confused perception of Italy’s “China policy” on the part of both China itself and Italy’s European partners.
On 22 January, Italian Police arrested a neo-Nazi sympathizer on terrorism-related offenses in the northwestern port city of Savona. Police also searched the houses of 12 other suspects across Italy, from Turin in the north of the country to Palermo in the south.
What are the main variables on which the success of Italy’s presidency of the G20 in 2021 depends? The question is particularly relevant with only a few days to go before the end of a year that has made the need for – and the absence of – effective global governance mechanisms so evident.
Having been on the increase in most parts of the world for some time, economic and social inequality have now become more acute across the European Union as well, in the wake of two severe crises: the global economic and financial crisis of 2008 and the Covid-19 pandemic, both of which struck the region within the course of little more than a decade. Will rising inequality trigger a new wave of protests, social radicalisation and political instability? It is likely to do so, but unlikely to be accompanied by traumatic effects and political regime changes.
The news that in November 2020 the Netherlands, a relatively small country of the European Union (EU), had issued its own official strategy on the Indo-Pacific region, generated much discussion around the world. The Netherlands was the third European country, after France (2018) and Germany (2020), to issue a comprehensive view of this new geography in strategic terms. These decisions underscore the increasing importance of the Indo-Pacific maritime geography over the next decades as the centre of gravity of global politics and economics.
In a progressively fragile and complex reality, the true social, economic and industrial revolution will start from space.
Italy’s turn at the G20 presidency could not be more momentous. It comes as the world is facing a second wave of infections of the novel coronavirus, and as new partial or full lockdowns worsen the economic situation in most countries. In this context, the choice of priorities of the Italian government for next year’s G20 – the “three Ps” – sounds increasingly effective, as G20 leaders are called to safeguard “People, Planet, and Prosperity”.