G7 Summit Kicks Off, PM Modi to Address 3 Sessions, First One Today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to address three breakout sessions at the G7 Summit over Saturday and Sunday. India has been invited as a guest country at the summit along with South Africa, Australia and South Korea.

Meanwhile on Friday, UK PM Boris Johnson opened the Summit in Cornwall with a message for the world leaders to “learn lessons” from the pandemic and warned that it is vital not to repeat mistakes of the “the last big economic recession of 2008″ when the recovery was not uniform across all parts of society.

As the host of the summit of the Group of Seven made up of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan as well the European Union Johnson said it was “genuinely wonderful” to see everyone in person for the first major physical event since the pandemic last year.

“I actually think that this is a meeting that genuinely needs to happen because we need to make sure we learn lessons from the pandemic. We need to make sure we don’t repeat some of the errors that we have made in the course of the last 18 months or so and we put in place what is needed to allow our economies to recover, Johnson said in his opening remarks. What’s gone wrong with this pandemic, what risks being a lasting scar, is the inequalities that have been entrenched. We need to make sure that as we recover, we level up across our societies we need to build back better,” he said.