Trade Minister's meeting
The meeting will be held in Reggio Calabria and Villa San Giovanni on July 16-17
12/07/2024
After a first meeting organized via videoconference by the Italian G7 Presidency on February 7, 2024, the G7 Trade Ministers’ Meeting will be held in Reggio Calabria and Villa San Giovanni on July 16-17.
Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Hon. Antonio Tajani, will welcome the G7 Ministers and the Vice- President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Trade, as well as the Ministers of invited non-member countries and representatives of the business world (Business 7) and of International Organizations.
The main objective of the G7 Trade Ministerial is to respond to the tensions and frictions that jeopardize global trade and sustainable and inclusive growth. To this end, the Italian G7 Presidency has identified four main issues for international trade that need to be addressed: consolidation of the multilateral trading system through the reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO); equal conditions of access to third markets; trade and environmental sustainability; and economic resilience and security.
The session with non-member countries and business representatives will be devoted to supply chain resilience.
Special attention will be paid to the crisis in the Red Sea – which affects international trade routes and has serious economic impacts on Mediterranean ports and supply chains – and the stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region, key to safeguarding political and international trade order.
The G7 Ministers and their guests will therefore have the opportunity to discuss these major issues with a view to maintaining trade as a driver of growth and development for both G7 members and the rest of the world. The G7 will work to ensure a well-functioning WTO, which is also essential for Italy’s economic
development, given the country’s capacity to export.
The G7 Ministers will then be called to address the issue of access to third markets, which is key to a competitive and open global market for companies.
With regard to the environmental crisis, the role played by trade in defending the planet from the damage caused by climate change and in fostering the green transition, by increasing exchange of environmentally friendly goods and services, will also be discussed. The meeting will also focus on improving the resilience of economies through the strengthening and diversification of global
value chains, ensuring increasing de-risking against excessive economic dependencies, and promoting economic security against coercive practices.
The programme of the meeting will also feature the Port of Gioia Tauro, which, with more than 3.5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent unit), is Italy’s leading port in terms of cargo traffic and the eighth in Europe. The visit to the Port of Gioia Tauro will be an opportunity to present to G7 Ministers the “Food for Gaza” humanitarian initiative, launched at the initiative of Deputy Prime Minister Tajani to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza. Specifically, the visit will involve a presentation of the team of twelve trainers that will travel to Cyprus to train local staff in the use of the container scanner that the Italian Customs Agency has made available to speed up checks on containers bringing
humanitarian aid to the Strip from Cyprus.