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The Strong Performance of the 2023 G7 Hiroshima Summit
John Kirton, Director, G7 Research Group
May 31, 2023
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The G7's 49th annual summit was a truly historic one (see Appendix A). For three days, from May 19 to 21, 2023, in Hiroshima, Japan, G7 leaders simultaneously confronted two genuinely existential threats to the planet and its people as a whole. The first was the danger of nuclear war, weapons proliferation and accidents in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, arising from Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons, nuclear-armed North Korea threatening its neighbours and a militarizing China practising to invade Taiwan. The second such threat was climate change, relentlessly driving global temperatures toward liveable limits and approaching critical tipping points beyond which there was no return. Accompanying this deadly duo were the interconnected crises of economic resilience and economic security, energy and food security, health and development. Also prominent on the summit agenda were gender equality, human rights and democracy, digitalization, and science and technology. Inspiring the G7's approach to this broad, demanding agenda were two perspectives: first, "upholding the international order based on the rule of law, … firmly rejecting any unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force or the threat to use nuclear weapons, as Russia has done, or the use of nuclear weapons" and, second, "strengthening outreach to the Global South, by demonstrating G7's contributions to the issues of their concern" (see Appendix B).
To confront these threats, the summit host, Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida, at his second regular G7 summit, joined French president Emmanuel Macron and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at their eighth, US president Joe Biden at his third, German chancellor Olaf Scholz at his second, Italy's prime minister Giorgia Meloni and the United Kingdom's prime minister Rishi Sunak at their first, and the European Union presidents Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen at their fourth. The invited leaders came from the Indo-Pacific: Anthony Albanese, prime minister of Australia; Mark Brown, prime minister of the Cook Islands and chair of the Pacific Islands Forum; Narendra Modi, prime minister of India and host of G20's New Delhi Summit; Jokowi Widodo, president of Indonesia and chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; Yoon Suk-yeol, president of Korea; and Pham Minh Chính, prime minister of Vietnam. They also included Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, and Azali Assoumani, president of Comoros and chair of the African Union. In the summit's greatest surprise, they were joined in person on the summit's last day by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Also attending were António Guterres of the United Nations, David Malpass of the World Bank, Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Kristalina Giorgieva of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mathias Cormann of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and, virtually, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Security, the G7's first priority, featured regional security in Europe, led by further sanctions against Russia and support for Ukraine. It included strengthening a free, open Indo-Pacific, amid China's threat to neighbouring democracies. As highlighted by the summit's location in Kishida's hometown of Hiroshima, it featured reducing the threats of nuclear war, weapons proliferation and poor civilian reactor safety, by taking realistic, practical steps toward a world without nuclear weapons. It embraced tackling crime and corruption and the overall need to defend democracy and human rights throughout the world.
The economy, the second priority, started with strengthening economic security by building resilient supply chains for critical minerals, other key goods, essential technologies and infrastructure, and by countering economic coercion, non-market practices and malicious digital misuse. It included restoring non-inflationary, inclusive growth through fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policy and strengthening financial stability through better financial regulation and supervision. It extended to trade, investment, infrastructure, travel and tourism, new partnerships for transparency, and overcoming vulnerabilities in the global food system.
Ecology and energy, the third priority, was led by climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and clean energy. Leaders sought a blueprint to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, reduce their own by 45% by 2030, strengthen energy security through clean and renewable sources, help climate-vulnerable people, and ask all major emitters to assist.
Food security, the fourth priority, addressed the current food crisis and its short-term issues, through actions to ensure access to affordable, safe, nutritious food for everyone and build resilient food security. It included identifying structural vulnerabilities in the global food system and paths to close them.
Health, the fifth priority, began with countering the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, and learning its lessons to strengthen the global health architecture for prevention, preparedness and response for the pandemics sure to come. Leaders would do so by contributing to shaping a new pandemic accord, better International Health Regulations and a richer Pandemic Fund, all with a better equipped WHO at the core. They intended to spur success on sustainable universal health coverage for the UN high level meeting in September. They also addressed HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, chronic and non-communicable diseases, zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance, and mental and brain health, especially as dementia spread among the rapidly aging populations in key G7 members.
Development, the sixth priority, started with restoring growth in poor countries and advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) due by 2030, through helping vulnerable people, raising development finance and countering non-sustainable debt.
On gender equality, leaders sought to synergize efforts to advance women in security, the economy and society. On digital governance they wished to standardize norms based on digital free flow with trust and advance science and technology. On human rights and democracy, they acted against disinformation, election interference and increasingly authoritarian regimes in China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and elsewhere.
To strengthen the G7's global governance, leaders would work with multilateral organizations amid a changing balance of power and cascading crises, cooperate with the major growing democracies led by India, and intensify the G7's relationship with the G7 and G20 engagements groups.
At its end of the Hiroshima Summit its performance was the subject of a debate among several schools of thought.
The first school argued that it produced the most substantive, consequential, globally relevant results in modern history, due to Kishida's leadership, the resumption of an in-person summit, and the presence of the leaders from Korea, Australia, India, Vietnam and, above all, Ukraine (Miyake 2023).
The second school argued that Hiroshima produced "some notable advances" and "culminated in a broad but more unified approach by member nations on the war in Ukraine and China's growing assertiveness," but added that "ultimately the success of the Hiroshima summit will be determined by its ability to turn communiques into concrete global action and by that measure, considerable work lies ahead" (Financial Times 2023). This school highlighted broadening international support for Ukraine, Zelensky's attendance, the decision to give Ukraine F-16 fighter jets and training and more military aid, and de-risking economic relations with China. It cautioned, however, that securing support from the Global South would remain a major challenge, the limited progress on climate commitments would not incentivize developing countries to act, and the need to respond to the Global South before and at the G20 New Delhi Summit in September.
This school was generally supported by the findings of the G7 Research Group's Goals Set and Met report (G7 Research Group 2023). It agreed that Hiroshima was a significant success, earning a grade of B+, but differed on the components. It gave climate change, the environment and terrorism a grade of A each; health A−; gender, crime and regional security (including Ukraine) B+ each; but non-proliferation only C.
The third school, saw comprehensive failure, due to the G7's decline in global economic predominance and the rise of China, India and other developing countries, the G20 and the BRICS. Martin Wolf (2023b, 15) noted the Hiroshima communiqué was "breathtakingly comprehensive" and that G7 leaders, whose countries dominated global reserve currencies, were right to defend democracy, existing borders and Ukraine and to diversify their supplies of energy and vital raw materials. Yet he emphasized that their global economic predominance was gone for good, that too many paper priorities meant none in reality, that emerging economies were creating a BRICS body going global with 19 countries apparently applying to join it, and that the G7 summit's "de-risking" ignored the threats of war and climate change.
The fourth school, led by the Asahi Shimbun's editorial board, argued that the summit failed on its key priority of nuclear disarmament. It declared that the summit's statement that "lacks a long-term perspective on nuclear abolition cannot be called a vision … The chair, Prime Minister Kishida, will be tested on his ability to send out a solid message to the world" (as cited in Miyake 2023).
The fifth school saw failure on the second existential threat of climate change, by not committing "to tougher action on fossil fuels after Germany and Japan prevailed on the continued use of gas and coal respectively" (Hodgson 2023a). The G7 promised to accelerate phasing out unabated coal power but with no deadline. It affirmed that continued public investment in gas was an appropriate temporary response to the crisis created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The G7 also ignored the pleas of Chile, the Netherlands and New Zealand to phase out fossil fuels as well as the warnings of vulnerable countries and climate experts.
Despite the assessments of several of the schools of thought, on the Hiroshima Summit's exceptionally demanding, broad and interconnected agenda, G7 leaders produced a strong performance, among the strongest that G7 summits have produced during the 49 years since their start in 1975. This strong performance, earning a full A, was seen in the major achievements on most of the critical issues the leaders addressed, and across most key dimensions of governance that such summits perform (see Appendix A).
The Hiroshima Summit's strong performance was led by very strong advances on its two top priorities of nuclear disarmament and the war in Ukraine, its strong advances on its next priorities of economic resilience and security, its significant advances on climate change, biodiversity, pollution, clean energy and food security, and its substantial if shrunken advances on global health (see Appendix B). It was reinforced and confirmed by the very high level of its private and public deliberation and decision making, and its above-average work on domestic political management for the host, direction setting through affirmations of open democracy and human rights, the promising potential for delivering its decisions, and the high institutional development of global governance inside and outside the G7.
This strong performance was propelled by the unusually severe, sustained, interconnected shocks that made G7 leaders aware of the vulnerabilities of their own countries and others, the failure of other international institutions in response, the G7's own globally predominant and internally equalizing share of critical capabilities, their common democratic convictions and characteristics, their solid domestic political control, and their presence in their valued club at the hub of an expanding network of global summit governance.
However, the Hiroshima leaders' strong supply of urgently needed global governance was still not enough to meet the even stronger demand, especially on the existential issue of climate change.
To prepare the Hiroshima Summit, Japan started on January 3, 2023, by identifying what the summit was about. Kishida soon started travelling to meet all his G7 counterparts in their capitals.
For the summit, Japan set no singular theme or plan to mobilize money. It sought instead to manage several enormous issues, led by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Zelensky was invited to address the Hiroshima Summit.
Also important were China, Brazil and India, all becoming more vocal on global issues and less willing to follow the G7's lead. G7 leaders knew they should not be seen as being too focused on Ukraine, as having double standards and not listening to other countries' priorities and views. Some G7 members wanted to ensure the group listened to the countries that sought to represent the broad group of emerging and developing countries, and to help identify what was important to them.
In late March Japan announced that it had invited to the summit the leaders of several emerging economies and other countries, emphasizing the Indo-Pacific, but with appropriate representation from other parts of the world. It knew the North-South split would arise, but Japan would work to achieve agreement among these guests and the G7 leaders on key issues.
In addition to Ukraine and climate change, there were the inherited issues made worse by the war in Ukraine. Food security was the first and energy security next.
Kishida's pre-summit visits to his fellow G7 leaders propelling progress on these priorities. In January he travelled to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Italy. Germany's leader travelled to Tokyo in March.
Another powerful push came from the G7's virtual special summit on February 24, with Ukraine's Zelensky presenting his priorities there. That summit's four-page communiqué affirmed the G7's distinctive foundational principles of open democracy once and human rights twice (G7 2023d). It produced 39 commitments, with 38 on Russia's war against Ukraine and one on the natural disaster caused by the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria. In its institutional development of global governance, it made four references to three institutions within the G7 and 10 references to seven international institutions outside. Those inside institutions were the finance ministers with two, and the G7 Ambassadors Group and the new Enforcement Co-ordination Mechanism with one each. The outside institutions were the UN with three, and, with one each, the G20, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the multi-agency donor coordination platform, the IMF, the International Criminal Court and the World Food Programme.
Major momentum came from the 14 stand-alone ministerial meetings Japan scheduled at the start of its hosting year, and the one they added later (see Appendix C). Among this very high number of ministerials, nine were scheduled before the summit and six afterward.
G7 ministerial meetings began on February 23, when G7 finance ministers and central bank governors (2023c) met in Bengaluru, India, on the margins of the G20 meeting there. They produced a consensus "G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Statement on Russia's War of Aggression against Ukraine and its Impact on the Global Economy." It contained nine paragraphs and 1,204 words. The first seven paragraphs were on the war and the final two on the economy, development and debt relief, but even the latter two began with a link to the war. The statement contained 23 commitments.
In contrast, the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors (2023) at Bengaluru failed to produce a consensus communiqué of their own (see Appendix D for a list of G20 ministerial meetings). They were left with only the "G20 Chair's Summary and Outcome Document: First G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting," with 16 paragraphs and 3,855 words, plus an annex of 1,027 words. The summary's third and fourth paragraphs – the only two on Ukraine – clearly specified that they were "taken from the Bali Leaders' Declaration [and] were agreed to by all member countries except Russia and China." China had now joined Russia's side in preventing a consensus communiqué. The rest of the document, however, contained 67 commitments.
The G7's centrality expanded when its finance ministers and central bank governors (2023b) met on April 12 on the margins of the semi-annual IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington DC. There they issued a consensus "G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Statement" of eight paragraphs and 775 words, and an annex of 448 words. The statement opened with a paragraph on the global economy, followed by four on Ukraine, then one on supply chain resilience for macroeconomic stability, climate change and development, and one on support for low- and middle-income countries.
G20 finance ministers and central bank governors also met in Washington but were unable to issue even a chair's summary this time. They thus went backward from the Bali Summit in November 2022 and even further from their own performance in Bengaluru seven weeks before.
The G7's stand-alone ministerial sequence began on April 15–16, when ministers of climate, energy and environment met in Sapporo (Houlie 2023). They made 343 commitments, the highest ever since environment ministers had started meeting in 1992. At Sapporo the ministers committed to prioritizing "concrete and timely steps towards the goal of accelerating the phase-out of domestic unabated coal power generation in a manner consistent with keeping a limit of 1.5°C temperature rise within reach and urge others to join us," "to end the construction of new unabated coal-fired power generation as identified in the IEA's Coal in Net Zero Transitions report in 2022" and "to work with other countries to end new unabated coal-fired power generation projects globally as soon as possible to accelerate the clean energy transition in a just manner" (G7 Climate, Energy and Environment Ministers 2023). But ministers agreed on no specific deadline, even as they needed to move twice as fast to do so by 2023 (Champenois 2023).
G7 foreign ministers (2023) met on April 16–18 in Karuizawa in Nagano Prefecture. Their communiqué contained an introduction and 24 sections with 9,244 words. It included section 16 on "economic resilience and economic security" and section 17 on "development finance and infrastructure." Their meeting was preceded by the G20 foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi on March 2, which had failed to issue a consensus communiqué. Its chair's summary, however, contained 16 commitments.
G7 agriculture ministers (2023) met in Miyazaki on April 22–23. Their communiqué contained 3,347 words, including the annex.
G7 labour and employment ministers (2023) met in Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture, also on April 22–23. Their communiqué contained 5,579 words.
G7 digital and tech ministers (2023) met in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, on April 29–30. Their communiqué contained 6,547 words.
G7 finance ministers and central bank governors (2023a) met again in Niigata on May 11–13. They were set to discuss recent US bank failures due to digital bank runs, the US debt ceiling, moves to stop Russia's sanctions evasion and financial aid to Ukraine (with its finance minister making a video presentation on this) (Reuters 2023a). The day before the meeting US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said "defaulting on our debt … would so badly undermine the US and global economy and I think it should be regarded by everyone as unthinkable" (Fedor, Smith and Franklin 2023). At the meeting, she asked for G7 "coordinated action" against China's economic coercion, and said of a prospective new US outbound investment screening mechanism "obviously, it would be most effective if there's coordinated action by a group of like-minded countries, and agreement that this is a useful approach" (FT Reporters 2023b).
At the end of their meeting the ministers and bank governors (2023a, d) released two outcome documents, the regular communiqué and a second one on the "G7 Shared Understanding on Enhanced Finance-Health Coordination and PPR Financing." The communiqué's 14 pages and 26 paragraphs, plus an annex, contained 86 commitments. They were led by those on Russia's war against Ukraine with 16 and climate change (including energy-related commitments) with 15. Then came the macroeconomy with nine, development (including debt relief) with eight, and trade and investment (including economic resilience and supply chains) with seven. In a third tier were health and crime/corruption with five each, reform of international financial institutions and tax with four each, digitalization with three, the environment and international cooperation with two each, and regional security (in Africa) with one. The second document contained only two commitments, both on health for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPR), and both promising that the G7 would work with and within the G20 to strengthen pandemic PPR globally.
G7 health ministers (2023a, b) met in Nagasaki on May 13–15. They issued a communiqué containing 109 commitments. These included six commitments in a separate section on dementia, by far the most that G7 health ministers had ever devoted to this globally growing disease. Also included were six commitments on gender equality, and several on climate change. The ministers reaffirmed their existing financial commitments and also promised repeatedly to work with the G20 on several key issues in global health.
G7 science and technology ministers (2023) met in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, on May 12–14 and issued a communiqué.
G7 education ministers (2023) met in Toyama and Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, on May 12–15. They made 29 commitments, including two on climate change and two on mental health. However, they did not institutionalize their somewhat sporadic education ministers' meetings, nor even agree to hold the next one the following year.
Further momentum for performance came from G7 members' very strong compliance with their leaders' priority summit commitments made at Elmau in June 2022. By January 6, 2023, as Japan's year as host began, average compliance had already reached 85%, as assessed by the interim compliance report of the G7 Research Group (Sharma, Moharir et al. 2023b). By May 16, it had risen further, with the final findings showing 91% compliance (Sharma, Moharir et al. 2023a). This very strong compliance with the 2022 Elmau Summit commitments thus made G7 compliance remain at a historically high levels for two consecutive years, reaching above 90%. Both years covered the first years of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the highly politically experienced and internationalist Joe Biden serving as president of the United States.
The final compliance report found complete compliance of 100% with the two Elmau commitments on regional security in Ukraine, with one on energy, with two on democracy and human rights, and with two on economic growth and trade. Close behind at 94% came one each on crime and corruption, labour and employment, and infrastructure. At 88% were one each on climate change, non-proliferation, terrorism, debt transparency, gender equality, digitalization, and food and agriculture. Lagging behind were another on climate change and on one on the environment at 81% and one on pandemic preparedness at 75%.
By mid April, G7 members had agreed that Zelensky would participate in the first session of the Hiroshima Summit. The G7 statement would say, as at Elmau, that the G7 was there for Ukraine for "as long as it takes." Members were conscious that it would look like they were retreating if they said instead that they were there for Ukraine for as long as their systems could sustain it.
The summit would issue several separate statements. There would be a very long communiqué, despite Japan's suggestion to curtail it. As of May 2, there would also be five stand-alone statements. The US was encouraging Japan to issue the statements separately at intervals throughout the summit.
One statement would be on nuclear non-proliferation. It would send a positive message. Woven in would be the G7's concern about the irresponsible behaviour of China and Russia – about China not being transparent about its nuclear weapons counts, and Russia's threats to move its nuclear weapons into Belarus.
A second statement, on a food security action plan, would be issued jointly with the invited leaders. Elmau committed $4.7 billion to food security in 2022, but Japan had decided to focus on the statement, rather than on mobilizing money, to avoid putting stress on domestic G7 government systems that would then concentrate on committing money. Nonetheless, there might be an aggregate amount specified in the communiqué.
A third statement would be on economic security, the first time such a statement would be issued along with the overall communiqué. It would contain an agreement to "collectively determine and respond to and counter economic coercion" (FT Reporters 2023b). It would refer to "countries of concern" with some references to China directly. The 2021 Cornwall communiqué was the first time the G7 leaders returned to referring to China in a major way, but now would do so with a more negative tone (G7 2021). There were more references to China – 14 in all – in the 2022 Elmau outcome documents. The Elmau Summit admonished China by referring to its "non-market policies" and "non-transparent and market-distorting interventions and other forms of economic and industrial directives" (G7 2022).
The Hiroshima passages on China would include export controls, outbound measures, supply chains and other issues that the EU's von der Leyen (2023) had referred to on March 30. The G7 had discussed supply chain issues in the past. But Japan's current push for economic security to be discussed at Hiroshima raised the question of carefully defining economic coercion. The G7's sanctions against Russia and Belarus could be considered a form of coercion. So was such action allowable when the G7 did it but not when others did? The discussions on trade and economic security also required a careful consideration of "decoupling" by G7 countries that were finding likeminded markets elsewhere. The phrase von der Leyen used was "de-risking," which could appear in the Hiroshima communiqué.
In 2021 the UK created a G7 experts panel to consider the G7 response to acute shocks to the global economy, as management of the macroeconomy was still core to the G7's work. By 2023 the focus had become the resilience of the global economy to shocks, such as the rise of a major non-market economy – China – or acute shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic. The word "resilience" would be woven through many of the Hiroshima Summit documents.
A fourth separate statement would be on gender equality. The subject would also be threaded throughout the documents. So too would the G7's commitment to democracy, human rights, the rule of law and inclusion overall.
Global health would feature less at Hiroshima, as the Covid-19 pandemic had been brought under control. In early May the WHO declared it was no longer a public health emergency of international concern. There was now a sense that the world was better prepared for a pandemic than it had been in 2020. Nonetheless, there was much work to do to prepare the world for the next one. There was hope that the G7 would agree on language that would produce meaningful results, to integrate the many initiatives underway to improve PPR.
Japan's focus would be on universal health coverage. The US wanted to make up lost ground due to Covid-19, especially with regard to vaccinations. There would be few, if any, financial commitments but there would be benchmarks to meet.
Several members had spoken about mental health and there was a private sector representation asking the G7 to amplify the message on Alzheimer's disease. By May 14, G7 leaders were expected to produce their strongest commitments in a decade to address dementia, which had become "the first or second leading cause of death in five of the seven G7 members" (Cookson 2023). Pushed by Japan, they would build on the commitments of their health ministers in Nagasaki to agree on "increased funding for research, improving access to care and increased international cooperation."
With regard to Japan's major priority of outreach, some G7 members such as the US resisted the term "Global South," but were prepared to go along with it. Some thought this term should not be used in the communiqué, as it did not reflect the diversity of the countries being referred to.
Some difficult issues persisted at the sherpa meeting in late April (Foy, Inagaki and Sevastopulo 2023). A US proposal to replace the sectoral sanctions against Russia with a full export ban (with exemptions for agricultural, medical and other products) was included in the draft communiqué, as the existing system allowed Russia to import advanced technology. But the EU and Japan considered a full export ban unrealistic and did not agree to this proposal. However, there was agreement to restrict "circumvention and evasion" of existing sanctions and act against those "wilfully supporting the financing of Russia's war" by pressuring Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Central Asian states. Sherpas also agreed to keep reducing Russian energy imports, to prevent "the reopening of avenues previously shut down by Russia's weaponization of energy" and to create a "traceability mechanism" on Russian diamonds to reduce Russia's export revenue.
On climate change, disagreement arose between Germany, on the one hand, which wanted Hiroshima's leaders to approve new public investment in natural gas, and France and the United Kingdom, on the other hand, which did not (FT Reporters 2023a). Germany wanted a repeat of the Elmau communiqué's statement that "in exceptional circumstance, publicly supported investment in the gas sector can be appropriate as a temporary response" and "investment in this sector is necessary in response to the current crisis" (G7 2022). France and the UK countered that this was incompatible with the G7's agreed climate goals, that the 2022 energy crisis and the temporary period had passed, and that Germany had now added enough of its liquefied natural gas terminals to bring gas from abroad.
On May 15, Kishida said in a media interview that the G7 leaders "will send out a strong message to realize a world free of nuclear weapons and will steadily proceed with more realistic and concrete efforts … conveying the reality of the nuclear attack is important as [a] starting point for all nuclear disarmament efforts" (Japan Times 2023). He added that leaders would send a strong message that they would not accept "unilateral attempts by China and Russia to change the status quo by force." To deal with the energy, food and climate crises, Kishida said the G7 needed to cooperate with the whole world, including the "Global South." Japan intended to lead debates about using artificial intelligence (AI) in a responsible manner. Kishida said he would start the "Hiroshima AI process" to create international rules for AI bot ChatGPT, while protecting privacy. He also said he would not call a snap election "for now."
On the summit's eve, over Russia's war against Ukraine, G7 leaders were poised to expand their measures to prevent any evasion and circumvention of existing sanctions, including financial transaction facilitators that supported the financing of Russia's war (Foy, Inagaki and Sevastopulo 2023). They would thus agree to "close loopholes that allow [third country] jurisdictions to access and re-export restricted G7 goods, services or technology to Russia" (Fleming and Foy 2023).
They would also further reduce their imports of Russian energy and prevent the "reopening of avenues previously shut down" (Foy, Inagaki and Sevastopulo 2023). They would produce plans for a mechanism to trace Russian diamonds to reduce Russia's revenue from such exports (Cornish, Fleming and Dempsey 2023). However, they were less likely to agree on a US proposal, resisted by Japan and the EU, to ban Russia's exports completely (beyond agriculture, medical and other products) to replace the G7's existing sector-by-sector approach.
On enhancing supply chain resilience, to maintain macroeconomic stability and energy security and increase sustainability, G7 finance ministers and central bank governors (2023b) committed on April 12 to "strengthening collaboration among G7 members and partners through the effective use of our respective public finance tools, based on the 'High-level Policy Guidance for Public Finance Tools to Build Resilient Supply Chains in the Era of Decarbonization.'" This included supporting "low- and middle-income countries to play bigger roles in supply chains and enhance their value addition." The G7 would also promise to "explore the development of a mutually beneficial partnership with low- and middle-income countries, in collaboration with Multilateral Development Banks and relevant international organizations."
On the global economy and financial sector, the finance ministers and central bank governors (2023b) reiterated their "determination to maintain macroeconomic and financial stability" and noted that "central banks remain strongly committed to achieving price stability." Noting that the financial system was "resilient," they promised to "continue to closely monitor financial sector developments and stand ready to take appropriate actions to maintain the stability and resilience of the global financial system." Leaders at Hiroshima would agree.
At Hiroshima, as noted above, leaders would also issue a separate statement on economic security, a concept that Japan, with US support, now strongly pushed. The statement would refer to "countries of concern," as well as some references directed at China, especially with regard to export controls, outbound measures and supply chains.
The nine sessions held at the Hiroshima Summit unfolded as follows:
In session 1, titled "Toward an international community characterized by co-operation not division and confrontation/ global economy," over a working lunch leaders discussed the direction of their talks, a free and open international order based on the rule of law, and their need for unity and the need to work with other countries to secure their understanding and support. They also discussed AI.
In session 2, on Ukraine, G7 members deliberated alone, agreeing that that they could not lose this war, but could not engage directly in it, and thus must support Ukraine. They agreed that Russia's action clearly violated international law and the UN charter, so they would never accept it. Kishida had invited Zelensky to the summit when Kishida visited Ukraine in March. The G7 issued a separate document on Ukraine after this session (G7 2023e).
At session 3, on foreign and security policy, leaders discussed a free and open international order, relations with China, nuclear disarmament, and their ideal of a world without nuclear weapons. They issued the G7 Leaders' Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament, as the single most important message from the summit (G7 2023c).
On Saturday, they started day 2 with session 4, on strengthening engagement with the international community, to help countries in the Global South.
Session 5, on economic resilience and economic security, addressed supply chains, and helping developing countries assist the G7 in diversifying theirs.
Session 6 was held with the invited guest leaders. The WHO's Tedros participated online, with all the others present in person. At this session of 24 leaders, each spoke for five minutes, for two hours in all. After this session the leaders issued a statement on food security – especially important for developing countries, which needed help after the disruptions caused by the pandemic and invasion of Ukraine.
After this session there was a side event, organized by Japan, the US and others, on the PGII. Infrastructure investment was another very important issue for developing countries, for which G7 governments needed to mobilize the private sector to help. The focus was on quality, and ensuring that recipients could repay their loans.
Session 7, the last one on day 2, addressed global warming and the environmental issues. With countries already committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050, there remained much to do to meet this goal. Meloni later left, saying her "conscience" required her to return to Italy to lead the response to the deadly floods in the Emilia-Romagna region (Reuters 2023b).
Day 3, on Sunday, was the climax, with Zelensky's in-person participation in session 8 on Ukraine. G7 leaders made it clear they would support him.
The final session included all the G7 leaders except Meloni and all the guests present including Zelensky. They affirmed the UN charter and the rule of law and opposed attempts to change the status quo by the use of force. They agreed they were not in a competition with different political regimes. The session ended with a photo of Kishida and Zelensky in front of the cenotaph at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, to send a message to Russia that the G7 could not be intimidated.
A more comprehensive summary of the discussions in each session, provided by the summit secretariat, is presented in Appendix E.
The Hiroshima Summit's strong performance started on Friday, May 19, the first day, with major advances on countering Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the threat of nuclear war and proliferation.
The first advance was the news that Zelensky would come to Hiroshima in person, to participate in the second session on Ukraine and security on the summit's final day (Kirton and Kulik 2023). He would thus appear not at the start but at the end of the summit. This gave the war in Ukraine twice as much attention as expected and made it a dominant theme throughout the summit from the very start to the very end. It meant that Zelensky felt sufficiently secure at home with the war going well enough that he could afford to travel halfway around the world to a country whose immediate neighbours were the countries that lay behind his Ukraine and the summit site in Japan – Russia and China. It also meant that G7 leaders could not allow him to return home with empty arms. At a minimum the Japanese host was more likely to change its long-standing policy of not exporting its arms to other countries, especially countries in conflict, thus joining its G7 partners to give Zelensky's Ukraine the arms that it so badly needed at a time when the inventories of the other G7 partners were running short. But the big question was whether Zelensky would fly home from the summit, metaphorically rather than materially, in an F-16 fighter jet with a well-trained Ukrainian pilot in the cockpit. The F-16 was the key piece of military equipment that Zelensky said he needed to succeed in his imminent liberation offensive. The key component was training Ukrainian pilots on flying and fighting in F-16s, a process that could take several months. Once the pilots were trained, the jets themselves could get into Ukraine within a day from neighbouring Poland and the other nearby members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that used them. The training and F-16s were the only links missing to make the G7's professed full support for Ukraine a reality in the air and on the ground.
The second advance, announced late Friday afternoon, was a G7 agreement to strengthen financial, military and diplomatic support for Ukraine, and stop sanctions evasion, to further squeeze Russia's ability to continue its war. Here the G7 moved from sector-specific sanctions toward more comprehensive ones, and agreed that Russia's exports of its diamonds would be curtailed.
The third advance was historic action on nuclear disarmament. Helping Zelensky win the war quickly and liberate all of Ukraine was all the more important given Russian president Vladimir Putin's continuing suggestions that his armed forces could and would use Russian nuclear weapons in Ukraine, in a desperate attempt to win his still badly failing "special military operation." The fact that his armed forces had not succeeded in the long battle of Bakhmut meant that the temptation to use Russian nuclear weapons might loom larger in Putin's mind. It certainly meant that the danger of nuclear war had become a clear and present one, rather than a distant memory from a long time ago when nuclear bombs were first used in war on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. That was why it was important that Kishida had chosen his home town of Hiroshima as the site of the summit and started it by having all G7 leaders assemble together in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park to show their determination to dampen the nuclear threat and agree now to start working toward a world that would be free, not only of nuclear war, but also of nuclear weapons themselves in the decades to come.
Beyond the important pictures at the cenotaph and the fine statements of principle, at 10:30 am came the release of the leaders' second, separate statement, the G7 Leaders' Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament. It started with their "commitment to achieving a world without nuclear weapons," restated in subsequent passages, and endorsed Japan's Hiroshima Action Plan (G7 2023c). The leaders affirmed "that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." They comprehensively addressed the current nuclear threat from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, pledged decisive measures to counter them, covered the safety of civilian nuclear reactors, noted the value of nuclear technology for medicine and clean energy, and promised continuing support for the IAEA.
Advances continued on the summit's second day, Saturday, May 20, at a somewhat lower level, as the G7 started acting in its new fields of economic resilience and economic security and defined a clean energy economy action plan. The summit issued two separate statements on these subjects in the early afternoon.
The G7 Leaders' Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security pledged to diversify G7 members' supply chains, "including by supporting a more significant role for low and middle income countries in supply chains" (G7 2023f). Leaders promised to implement the PGII, and specified critical minerals, semiconductors and batteries as the sectors where they would start. They promised to protect their critical digital infrastructure, launched the Coordination Platform on Economic Coercion and reaffirmed their collaboration through the Framework for G7 Collaboration on Digital Technical Standards.
On global health the Hiroshima Summit produced a substantial if shrunken performance. There was no separate statement on health, unlike on the five subjects of Ukraine, nuclear disarmament, the economy, clean energy and food. Health was dealt with only in the G7 Hiroshima Leaders' Communiqué, which listed it in 14th place in the preamble, and addressed it only midway through the 66 paragraphs (G7 2023a). It received three paragraphs (paras. 33–35), fewer than most of the preceding subjects.
The health section, however, began on a properly strong note. It focused on strengthening the global health architecture with the WHO at its core for future public health emergencies. Leaders committed to "more coordinated and sustained leader-level governance … strengthening the leading role of WHO" (G7 2023a). They applauded the decision to raise the share of the WHO's base budget to 50%, but made no promise to help do this. Nor did the G7 mobilize new money of its own for the needs it acknowledged for low- and middle-income countries' pandemic response. Repeated references to the "post COVID-19 era" or "conditions" suggested that the G7 neglected the many still dying from this disease within and beyond its members.
The G7's most ambitious and new commitment was to "reverse the first global decline in life expectancy in more than seven decades" with specific component targets and timetables, including reducing maternal, newborn and child mortality to return survival rates to "better than pre-pandemic levels" consistent with "the full range of SDG targets and indicators related to UHC." Another important advance was announcing the G7 Hiroshima Vision for Equitable Access to Medical Countermeasures (MCM) and launching the MCM Delivery Partnership (G7 2023b).
Far more surprising and disappointing was the tiny treatment of antimicrobial resistance, the climate-health link, mental health, and the health of the aged and their brain health, especially dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The several commitments on brain health just made by G7 health ministers (2023) at their meeting in Nagasaki on May 14 had been swiftly reduced by their leaders to only one: "We remain committed to promoting policies and resources to care for people living with dementia and welcome the development of potentially disease modifying therapies for the various types of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease."
On the third and final day, Sunday, May 21, the advances came in the leaders' public performance and their concluding news conferences, as no new statements or communiqués were released. The highlight was Zelensky's visit with Kishida to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Zelensky's concluding news conference in the late afternoon.
The leaders' achievements at Hiroshima across the six major dimensions of performance was strong (see Appendix A).
Hiroshima was, unusually, a full three-day summit, rather than the usual one of two working days spread over three calendar ones. The elite media was thus obliged to travel with and report on their leaders to those back home. There were thus more chances for photo ops and front-page stories to appear.
All G7 members and guest country leaders attended in person, despite some suggestion a few days before the summit started that US president Joe Biden would have to stay home to deal with a looming debt deadlock and thus crisis there. On the summit's final day, Zelensky was added to an already star-studded cast. Italy's Meloni left late on Saturday, after the G7 leaders had finished meeting on their own, in order to deal with the urgent domestic issue of the devastating flooding in the northern Emilia-Romagna region.
The G7 leaders' six outcome documents contained 17 communiqué compliments to six of the eight members, for 75% of them. This was far more than the average of four compliments to 30% of them. The Hiroshima compliments went to the host Japan with six, France with four, the United States with three, the European Union with two, and the United Kingdom and Germany with one each.
Media attention and approval were strong on May 17–18 in the Japanese elite newspapers. This provided a further boost for Kishida, who left open the possibility of calling a snap election soon. Coverage was boosted by the summit's location in Kishida's hometown. Japan's major TV channels provided live coverage as Zelensky drove from the airport to Hiroshima. The post-summit editorial in the Financial Times on May 23 offered strong approval of the summit itself.
The boost in Kishida's public opinion approval rating was very strong, rising nine points in two polls published just after the summit's end (Reynolds 2023). The Yomiuri poll showed a leap of nine percentage points to 56% approval. The Mainichi poll also showed a nine-point rise, to 45% approval. Kishida's earlier rise, in April, had been due in part to his foreign policy success in visiting Ukraine. Zelensky appeared again with Kishida, now on the summit's centre stage at the latter's political home.
Leaders' private conversations were very strong, as they expanded in several ways. The first was the large number of long duration ceremonial events on all three days of the summit, which offered many occasions for informal, unscripted conversations among leaders.
The large but manageable number of guest participants – eight country leaders and seven heads of international institutions – reinforced the range and diversity of private deliberations, especially as almost all the guest country leaders came from democracies, and the major ones had been to G7 summits in the recent past. This was especially so for Zelensky, who led the Ukraine discussion on the final day, as he had at the virtual special summit on February 24. The quality of the private dialogue was enhanced by the fact that all the guests had a substantive focus – on food security – for their discussion with G7 leaders as equals. Their second session on the final day, now also with Zelensky, had a similar sharp focus.
Moreover, several G7 leaders had separate bilateral meetings with the guest leaders (notably Korea), on the way to and from the summit itself, as well as at Hiroshima itself.
More private conversations were facilitated by meetings of the Quad, with Albanese, Biden, Kishida and Modi, and of AUKUS, with Albanese, Biden and Sunak, both held on the side lines at Hiroshima, with the former rescheduled so Biden could cut short his overseas trip to return to Washington to deal with the debt ceiling deadlock there.
Public deliberations, recorded in leaders' collective communiqué conclusions, were strong. There was never any doubt that the G7 leaders would produce a consensus communiqué, unlike at the G20's Bali Summit, at the last minute, in November 2022. The G7 leaders produced several collectively agreed statements on key issues, expanding the number and range of subjects addressed. They issued five separate statements, plus the very lengthy, traditional communiqué, for a total of six outcome documents.
Together these six documents contained 30,046 words. This was the highest during the last 14 summits, since the 31,167 words at the L'Aquila Summit in 2009. It was the fourth highest in the 49 years of G7 summitry, following the 30,695 words in at St. Petersburg in 2006, and the all-time high of 38,517 at Sea Island in 2004. It more than doubled the average of the 48 summits from 1975 to 2022.
Hiroshima's separate statements started with the two released on the opening day. The G7 Leaders' Statement on Ukraine contained 2,735 words in 27 paragraphs.
The second, the G7 Leaders' Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament, contained 1,739 words in 11 paragraphs. It was the first ever G7 leaders document to focus on nuclear disarmament.
The third statement, the G7 Leaders Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security, issued in the early afternoon of May 20, contained 1,623 words in 19 paragraphs.
The fourth statement, the G7 Clean Energy Economy Action Plan, also issued in the early afternoon of May 20, contained 2,201 words in 16 paragraphs.
The fifth statement, the Hiroshima Action Statement for Resilient Global Food Security, issued in the evening of May 20, contained 2,674 words in 16 paragraphs.
The G7 Hiroshima Leaders' Communiqué itself, issued early for the first time in G7 summit history, in late afternoon on May 20 before the last day of the summit, contained 19,078 words in 133 long paragraphs and 40 pages.
The six documents affirmed the G7's first distinctive foundational principle of open democracy 19 times. They affirmed the second such principle of human rights 38 times, to produce 57 affirmations in all. This was well above the summit average of 34.
Decision making, measured by the production of collective, precise, future oriented, politically obligatory commitments, was very strong. Together the six documents contained 680 commitments. This was the highest ever among all G7 summits since 1975. It was substantially higher than the previous peak of 547 commitments at the Elmau Summit in 2022.
The G7 Hiroshima Leaders' Communiqué itself contained 415 commitments.
The five other statements contained a total of 265 commitments, as follows:
The commitments covered 34 subjects, when categorized by the section and document titles in the documents (see Appendix F). They were led by food security with 98 commitments; followed by the clean energy economy with 84; Ukraine with 68; economic resilience and security with 60; economy, finance and sustainable development with 41 and the environment also with 41; climate change with 37; and health with 30. Then came energy with 23; gender with 21; terrorism, extremism, and crime and corruption with 20; digital with 18; nuclear disarmament and labour with 17 each; and refugees and migration with 15.
Delivery through members' subsequent compliance with these commitments should be strong, but will only be assessed first soon after the G7 presidency shifts to Italy and then again just before the 2024 summit in Puglia. Hiroshima's likely high compliance will be due in part to the large number and breadth of pre-summit ministerial meetings; in the past such meetings have coincided with, and plausibly caused, higher compliance with the leaders' summit commitments on the same subjects. At Hiroshima, compliance will be reinforced by the large number of references the leaders made to many of these ministerial bodies, led by those for climate change, biodiversity and clean energy. All of Hiroshima's priorities and subjects with the most commitments included references to the corresponding ministerial or official G7 institution.
This support from G7 ministerial and official bodies will be aided by the continuing crisis of Russia's war against Ukraine and by Biden's presence as president of the United States.
The institutional development of global governance was significant. The six outcome documents together contained 62 references to 28 institutions inside the G7 and 263 references to 93 institutions outside the G7.
The 28 institutions inside the G7 were led by the PGII with eight references, followed by "relevant ministers" with seven. The 2022 German presidency had six, finance ministers had five, and the health ministers, Coordination Platform on Economic Coercion, the Climate Club and the Just Energy Transition Partnerships had three each. The digital and tech ministers, the Multi-agency Donor Coordination Platform, and Russia Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs (REPO) Task Force each had two. There were one each to the climate ministers, energy ministers, environment ministers, trade ministers, labour and employment ministers, the Enforcement Coordination Mechanism, Global Alliance for Food Security, the Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, the Partnership for RISE (Resilient and Inclusive Supply-chain Enhancement), the Global Shield Against Climate Risks, the G7 Alliance on Nature Positive Economy, MCM Delivery Partnerships, the Institutional Arrangement for Partnership, the G7 Virtual Academy, the G7 Dashboard on Gender Gaps and the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism. Several of these were bodies created by the Hiroshima Summit. By subject, seven of these 28 institutions, for 25%, focused on climate change, biodiversity and clean energy.
The 93 institutions outside the G7 that were referenced were led by the UN with 23, followed by the G20 with 19, the WTO with 19, the OECD with 16, multilateral development banks with 12, the IEA with 11, the WHO 10, the Paris Agreement 10, and the UN Security Council (UNSC), IAEA, IMF and World Bank with eight each. These references coincided highly with the multilateral organizations whose heads were invited and participated as guests.
The presence of the conditions for the six proven powerful causes of G7 summit governance propelled the Hiroshima Summit to its strong performance. These conditions were the exceptionally severe, sustained, broad and interconnected shocks that made the leaders aware of their countries' vulnerabilities, the failure of other international institutions in response, their own globally predominant and internally equalizing share of critical capabilities, their common democratic convictions and characteristics, their solid domestic political control, and their presence in their valued club at the hub of an again expanding network of global summit governance.
G7 members' shock-activated vulnerability was very strong and broad, led by Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and by climate change.
In their six outcome documents at Hiroshima, G7 leader recognized shocks 112 times. This was far more than at any summit before. There were 61 such references in the communiqué, followed by 23 in the statement on Ukraine, six in the Hiroshima vision on disarmament, seven in the statement on economic resilience and security, three in the G7 Clean Energy Economy Action Plan and 12 in the Hiroshima Action Statement for Resilient Global Food Security. By subject, the leaders recognized 12 different shocks: regional security had 46 (appearing in five of the six documents), general crises had 15, climate change had 14, health had nine, the economy and human rights both had six, terrorism had four, energy and non-proliferation both had three, and trade, gender and development had two each. This array coincided well with the subjects with the highest number of commitments: food security with 98 commitments; clean energy economy with 84, Ukraine (regional security) with 68; economic resilience and security with 60; economy, finance and sustainable development with 41 and the environment also with 41; climate change with 37; and health with 30.
The leaders themselves had previously recognized such shocks 17 times in their four-page communiqué issued at their special summit on February 24. Sixteen references there were to Russia's continuing war of aggression, atrocities, assault, attacks or brutal invasion against Ukraine, with one on the "catastrophe" of the deadly earthquake that struck Türkiye and Syria on February 9.
In the communiqués from the ministerial meetings, which had started in late April, their ministers also made many references to shocks. Ministers of climate, energy and the environment at Sapporo on April 14–15, in their 33-page communiqué, made 36 references to shocks on three subjects. Climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, labelled the "triple crises," led with 18, followed by energy with 14 (sharing one with the former), and Russia's aggression against Ukraine with four. The ministers also made 18 references to vulnerabilities, identifying seven groups and two causes. There were five references to developing countries, two references each to vulnerable countries, groups and people, and one each to the most vulnerable, least developed countries and small island developing states, and the Vulnerable 20. The causes of these vulnerabilities were supply chains and climate change, with two each.
Foreign ministers in Nagano on April 18 made 25 references to shocks and 26 to vulnerabilities. These included 19 to Russia's aggression against Ukraine in its various aspects, and another four to the Covid-19 pandemic and one on health emergencies, three to humanitarian crises, one to the Turkish/Syrian earthquake, one to "multiple crises" and one to the environmental "triple global crisis" (G7 Foreign Ministers 2023). There was one reference to economic vulnerabilities and five to natural disasters.
Agriculture ministers at Miyazaki on April 23 made eight references to shocks, with eight on Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, and one on the Covid-19 pandemic, but none on the food crisis itself.
Labour and employment ministers in Kurashiki on April 23 made 21 references to shocks. The Covid-19 pandemic had 10, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine nine, and climate change and inflation one each.
Finance ministers and central bank governors at their Niigata meeting on May 13 recognized 16 shocks and nine vulnerabilities in their communiqué. These shocks were led by Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine with nine. This was followed by climate shocks and related natural disasters, multiple economic shocks, and Covid-19 with two each, and unspecified multiple shocks with one. The vulnerabilities were led by three on debt, followed by climate, finance and energy with two each. Several of the communiqué's 86 commitments specified that these shocks and vulnerabilities were a direct cause of the commitment produced.
Media-highlighted shock-activated vulnerabilities were also strong, sustained and broad. Those to democracy (above all Russia's war against a democratic Ukraine) and the economy led, with health retreating from the prominence it had before.
In April, on the front page of the Financial Times, stories on democracy appeared on 96% of the recorded days, followed by the economy on 83%, digitalization on 58%, climate change on 42% and health on 38%. From May 1 to 12, on the front page, stories on the economy appeared on 83% of the six recorded days, on democracy and on digitalization on 67%, and on climate change and health only 33%. During this time, the average number of front-page stories (on the days that they appeared) was led by democracy at 56%, followed by the economy at 47%, digitalization 38%, and climate change and health at 25% each.
The week before and during the summit, from May 13 to 20, on the front page of the Financial Times, on the seven days it appeared, stories on democracy appeared on 88%, on climate and energy on 63%, on the economy 57%, and on digital and on health 38%. Stories on the G7 itself appeared on 57%. This pattern corresponds somewhat with the highest number of commitments by subject, with Ukraine (democracy) having 68, clean energy, climate change, the environment and energy 162, the economy, finance and development 41, digital 18 and health 30.
Scientific shocks featured the release of a report, just before the summit's start, by the World Meteorological Organization, stating that there was a 66% chance that the world's surface temperatures would probably exceed 1.5°C above preindustrial levels in at least one year by 2027 – just five years away (Hodgson 2023a). There was also a 98% change it would surpass the 1.28°C reached in 2016, the hottest year ever. Arctic temperatures were expected to increase three times faster than the global average, melting the ice that reflected the sun and creating a runaway "ice albedo" tipping point.
Physical shocks were also strong and broad. They were led by Russia's imminent conquest of Bakhmut. There were many climate-related extreme weather events, notably severe floods in northern Italy, which led Meloni to return home early and miss the summit's final day, and forest fires in western Canada.
Multilateral organizational failure in controlling these shocks was strong and broad, propelling the Hiroshima Summit to produce a strong performance to fill the gap. On security, the Permanent Five members of the UNSC, with Russia and China wielding their vetoes, had failed to stop or reverse Russia's invasion and destruction of Ukraine. The IAEA had failed to reduce Russia's threat to Ukraine's nuclear power plants. The IMF had failed to produce strong, sustained, non-inflationary, inclusive growth and financial stability.
The World Bank, even with the imminent departure of David Malpass and the appointment of Ajay Banga, had not restored development or provided the needed debt relief to developing countries. UN Climate, UN Biodiversity and the UN Environment Programme were struggling to prevent climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. No multilateral energy organization existed to provide affordable energy supply, stability and security. On health, the WHO faced fragmentation from several new health institutions and initiatives, as well as staff resignations due to sexual misconduct.
Another major failure came from the informal institution of the G20, which many had seen as superseding the G7 since the G20 began meeting at the leaders' level in 2008 (Kirton 2013). However, after succeeding at the last minute to produce a consensus communiqué at the Bali Summit in November 2022, the G20's performance suffered a severe decline. It had failed to mount a special summit in 2022 or 2023, while the G7 produced six in 2022 and one in 2023. G20 ministers in 2023 failed to produce any communiqué, retreating at first to a chair's summary instead. And in April, their finance ministers and central bank governors could not even produce that. In May, China and Saudi Arabia had started boycotting G20 working group meetings, arguing that the one on tourism in Kashmir was on territory that Pakistan claimed.
These gaps in global governance in the security field were partly filled by NATO, and the emerging Quad summit and AUKUS summit in the Indo-Pacific. Yet it was largely left to the G7 to do the job, even by serving as the site during the Hiroshima Summit for the Quad and the AKSUS summits to take place.
The collective global predominance and internal equalization of the capabilities of G7 members partly propelled Hiroshima's performance.
Overall, the global share of G7 members' gross domestic product at current exchange rates had declined since the group's predominance in 1990, right after the Cold War victory. In 2023, however, "measured in comparable terms (at 'purchasing power parity'), the economies of the US and its allies remained some 80 per cent bigger than those of China and Russia together" (Wolf 2023b).
Moreover, from a low against the US dollar in November 2022, the euro's value rose steadily to February 2023, then after a dip resumed its rise in March to reach its highest level in a year on April 28 before declining again (BBC 2023).
Moreover, on many of the critical capabilities, from defence spending and supplying arms to Ukraine to control of the international financial system and its major multilateral institutions, the G7's traditional predominance endured, led by the US.
The democratic commonality among G7 members strengthened, to reach a high degree. From 2021 to 2022, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, Japan and France rose from being a flawed to become a full democracy (see Appendix G). The G7 now had five full democracies, with only the US and Italy as flawed ones.
The leaders' domestic political control was substantial. It was led by host Japan, the powerful US and Germany, Italy and the EU, and was solid in France, the UK and Canada. Together the G7 leaders brought a total of 25 years of experience at the regular, annual G7 summits, led by Macron and Trudeau with seven years each. Every leader was highly likely to remain in office, without an election, following the Hiroshima Summit for at least another year, unless Kishida decided to call an election to improve his rising position before that. Yet their domestic public approval was mixed. Just before the summit, Morning Consult reported that Meloni had 49% approval, Biden 42%, Trudeau 39%, Scholz 34%, Sunak 33% Kishida 31% and Macron 25% (Baker 2023). Among the guest leaders, India's Modi had 78%, while Australia's Albanese had over 50%.
In host Japan, Kishida's LDP coalition with the New Komeito party had majority control of both legislature chambers. He faced re-election as LDP leader only one year later. His LDP won four of five by-elections on April 23, in a surprising advance. After a prolonged slump, his public approval ratings had spiked following his surprise visit to Ukraine on March 21. By April 30, public support for his cabinet had risen to 52%, above 50% for the first time in eight months, and up four percentage points from March, while disapproval was only 40% (Nikkei Staff Writers 2023).
In the US, Biden's Democratic Party narrowly controlled the Senate but was slightly behind in the House of Representatives. Biden and the Congress faced an election in November 2024, one year and a half after the Hiroshima Summit. Biden's persistently low approval ratings had started to rise, along with the economy, in 2023. On April 25 he announced that he would run for re-election, as polls showed that he would again narrowly beat Donald Trump, the leading prospective Republican candidate.
In Germany, in the 2021 general election, Scholz's leftist Social Democratic Party (SPD) had narrowly won the vote with 25.7% of the vote (Politico 2023b). In the February 2023 regional elections, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) overtook the SPD's 18.5% with 27.5% of the vote. As of May 8, polls suggested that national parliament voting intentions would deliver a CDU victory with 29% of the vote, with the SPD trailing with 18% and the Greens at 16% (Politico 2023b; Chazan 2023). Still Scholz's SPD had a solid, if strained, coalition with the Greens and the Free Democratic Party, giving him control of both legislative chambers. He did not face re-election for another two years, in 2025.
In France, Macron had been re-elected in April 2022 with 58.5% of the vote, beating far-right candidate Marine Le Pen with 41.5% (AFP 2023). Macron's Renaissance Party controlled the National Assembly, with the next election in 2027. But after his controversial and unpopular pension reform in mid-January 2023, Macron's popularity had plummeted as France experienced violent street protests in Paris and many other major cities. By May 5, Macron's approval rating had dropped to 28%, with a disapproval rating of 71% (Politico 2023a). According to one French pollster, should an election be held today, Le Pen was projected to win (AFP 2023).
In the United Kingdom, Sunak's Conservative Party had sole control of the legislature, with the next election due in 2025. However, the party had done poorly in recent by-elections and city council elections and the deputy prime minister had resigned in late April for bullying his subordinates. Polls showed the government was deeply unpopular, and that the opposition Labour Party would secure 44.4% of the vote, compared to the Conservatives 28.5%, were an election held today (Politico 2023c).
In Italy, Meloni, the country's first female and youngest prime minister, had won the September 2022 election as leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy Party, forming a coalition with two other right-wing parties. By February 2023, her popularity had risen from 26% during the fall election to above 30%, while support for her coalition partners had waned (Williams 2023). Her stable coalition had control of both legislative chambers. The next election was due in 2027.
In Canada, Trudeau's Liberal Party had a minority of seats in the House of Commons but its "supply and confidence" agreement with the social democratic New Democratic Party would keep it in power until the next election due by October 2025. The popularity of Trudeau and his party, however, was below or at best equal to, that of the opposition Conservative Party and its new right-wing leader, Pierre Polievre. Trudeau's approval rating, by March 23, declined to 37% from the end of 2022 (with the disapproval rating standing at 57%) (Angus Reid Institute nd). Should an election be held then, the Conservative Party would gain enough seats to win a minority government (Fournier 2023).
The European Union's next presidency elections – chosen by EU national heads of state or government – would be in 2024, with the European Commission presidency elected in October and European Council presidency in December.
The status of the G7 as the valued club at the hub of an expanding network of global summit governance was a strong propellor of performance. It was seen in and strengthened by the full participation of all country leaders in the G7's special summit on February 24, although there were fewer such special summits than the six there had been in 2022. The value of the G7 was further seen in Kishida's pre-summit meetings with all his G7 partners.
Biden fully supported inventing, institutionalizing and investing in plurilateral summitry. He had thus mounted several such meetings, including a second Summit for Democracy and the Major Economies Forum in 2023. He had held the first Quad summit with Japan, India and Australia (both invited to Hiroshima) in 2021. He agreed to hold the Quad summit in Hiroshima during the G7 one, when the Congressional deadlock over the US debt limit forced him to cancel his scheduled trip to Australia. He also held the AUKUS summit with Japan and the UK in the nest of the G7 Hiroshima one.
At Hiroshima, G7 leaders did the big, bold things that only they could do and that the world badly needed. Their actions flowed from and strengthened the G7's distinctive foundational mission of protecting and promoting open democracy, individual liberty and social advance everywhere. With G7 leaders acting together with great unity, the Hiroshima Summit produced a strong performance for the world.
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G7 (2023b). "G7 Hiroshima Vision for Equitable Access to Medical Countermeasures." Hiroshima, May 20. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/2023hiroshima/session3_01_en.pdf.
G7 (2023c). "G7 Leaders' Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament." Hiroshima, May 19. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/2023hiroshima/230519-disarmament.html.
G7 (2023d). "G7 Leaders' Statement." February 24. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/2023hiroshima/230224-statement.html.
G7 (2023e). "G7 Leaders' Statement on Ukraine." Hiroshima, May 19. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/2023hiroshima/230519-ukraine.html.
G7 (2023f). "G7 Leaders' Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security." Hiroshima, May 20. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/2023hiroshima/230520-economy.html.
G7 Agriculture Ministers (2023). "2023 G7 Agriculture Ministers' Communiqué." Miyazaki, Japan, April 22–23. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/agriculture/230423-communique.html.
G7 Climate, Energy and Environment Ministers (2023). "G7 Climate, Energy and Environment Ministers' Communiqué." Sapporo, Japan, April 16. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/environment/2023-communiqué.html.
G7 Digital and Tech Ministers (2023). "Ministerial Declaration: The G7 Digital and Tech Ministers' Meeting." Takasaki, Gunma, Japan, April 29–30. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/ict/2023-declaration.html.
G7 Education Ministers (2023). "Toyama-Kanazawa Declaration by G7 Education Ministers' Meeting." Toyama and Kanazawa, Japan, May 15. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/education/2023-education.html
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G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (2023c). "G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors' Statement on Russia's War of Aggression against Ukraine and Its Impact on the Global Economy." Bengaluru, India, February 23. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/finance/230223-finance.html.
G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (2023d). "G7 Shared Understanding on Enhanced Finance-Health Coordination and PPR Financing." Niigata, Japan, May 13. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/finance/230513-finance-health.html.
G7 Foreign Ministers (2023). "G7 Japan: Foreign Ministers' Communiqué." Karuizawa, Nagano, Japan, April 18. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/foreign/230418-communique.html.
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G7 Health Ministers (2023b). "G7 Nagasaki Health Ministers Communiqué." Nagasaki, May 14. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/healthmins/230514-communique.html.
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G7 Science Ministers (2023). "G7 Science Ministers' Communiqué." Sendai, May 14. http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/science/2023-science.html.
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Hodgson, Camilla (2023b). "Summit Fails to Agree on Fossil Fuels Amid Japanese Opposition." Financial Times, May 22, p. 2.
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Year |
Grade |
Domestic |
Deliberation |
Direction setting |
Decision making |
Delivery |
Development |
Participation |
|||||||
# communiqué compliments |
Spread |
# days |
# statements |
# words |
# references to core values |
# commitments |
Compliance |
# assessed |
# ministerials created |
# official-level groups created |
# members |
# participating countries |
# participating international organizations |
||
1975 |
A− |
2 |
29% |
3 |
1 |
1,129 |
5 |
14 |
54% |
2 |
0 |
1 |
6 |
0 |
0 |
1976 |
D |
0 |
0% |
2 |
1 |
1,624 |
0 |
7 1 |
|
0 |
0 |
7 |
0 |
0 |
|
1977 |
B− |
1 |
13% |
2 |
6 |
2,669 |
0 |
29 |
|
0 |
1 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
|
1978 |
A |
1 |
13% |
2 |
2 |
2,999 |
0 |
35 |
57% |
3 |
0 |
0 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
1979 |
B+ |
0 |
0% |
2 |
2 |
2,102 |
0 |
34 |
|
1 |
2 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
|
1980 |
C+ |
0 |
0% |
2 |
5 |
3,996 |
3 |
55 |
|
0 |
1 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
|
1981 |
C |
1 |
13% |
2 |
3 |
3,165 |
0 |
40 |
50% |
2 |
1 |
0 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
1982 |
C |
0 |
0% |
3 |
2 |
1,796 |
0 |
23 |
15% |
1 |
0 |
3 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
1983 |
B |
0 |
0% |
3 |
2 |
2,156 |
7 |
38 |
22% |
2 |
0 |
0 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
1984 |
C− |
1 |
13% |
3 |
5 |
3,261 |
0 |
31 |
27% |
2 |
1 |
0 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
1985 |
E |
4 |
50% |
3 |
2 |
3,127 |
1 |
24 |
63% |
2 |
0 |
2 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
1986 |
B+ |
3 |
25% |
3 |
4 |
3,582 |
1 |
39 |
29% |
1 |
1 |
1 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
1987 |
D |
2 |
13% |
3 |
7 |
5,064 |
0 |
53 |
65% |
1 |
0 |
2 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
1988 |
C− |
3 |
25% |
3 |
3 |
4,872 |
0 |
27 |
|
0 |
0 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
|
1989 |
B+ |
3 |
38% |
3 |
11 |
7,125 |
1 |
61 |
46% |
4 |
0 |
1 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
1990 |
D |
3 |
38% |
3 |
3 |
7,601 |
10 |
78 |
45% |
4 |
0 |
3 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
1991 |
B− |
1 |
13% |
3 |
3 |
8,099 |
8 |
53 |
69% |
2 |
0 |
0 |
9 |
1 |
0 |
1992 |
D |
1 |
13% |
3 |
4 |
7,528 |
5 |
41 |
86% |
3 |
1 |
1 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
1993 |
C+ |
0 |
0% |
3 |
2 |
3,398 |
2 |
29 |
79% |
2 |
0 |
2 |
8 |
1 |
0 |
1994 |
C |
1 |
13% |
3 |
2 |
4,123 |
5 |
53 |
86% |
2 |
1 |
0 |
8 |
1 |
0 |
1995 |
B+ |
3 |
25% |
3 |
3 |
7,250 |
0 |
78 |
65% |
1 |
2 |
2 |
8 |
1 |
0 |
1996 |
B |
1 |
13% |
3 |
5 |
15,289 |
6 |
128 |
71% |
23 |
0 |
3 |
8 |
1 |
4 |
1997 |
C− |
16 |
88% |
3 |
4 |
12,994 |
6 |
145 |
63% |
11 |
1 |
3 |
9 |
1 |
0 |
1998 |
B+ |
0 |
0% |
3 |
4 |
6,092 |
5 |
73 |
71% |
13 |
0 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
1999 |
B+ |
4 |
22% |
3 |
4 |
10,019 |
4 |
46 |
73% |
10 |
1 |
5 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
2000 |
B |
1 |
11% |
3 |
5 |
13,596 |
6 |
105 |
87% |
29 |
0 |
4 |
9 |
4 |
3 |
2001 |
B |
1 |
11% |
3 |
7 |
6,214 |
3 |
58 |
74% |
20 |
1 |
2 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
2002 |
B+ |
0 |
0% |
2 |
18 |
11,959 |
10 |
187 |
68% |
24 |
1 |
8 |
10 |
0 |
0 |
2003 |
C |
0 |
0% |
3 |
14 |
16,889 |
17 |
206 |
81% |
20 |
0 |
5 |
10 |
12 |
5 |
2004 |
C+ |
0 |
0% |
3 |
16 |
38,517 |
11 |
245 |
77% |
33 |
0 |
15 |
10 |
12 |
0 |
2005 |
A− |
8 |
67% |
3 |
16 |
22,286 |
29 |
212 |
83% |
28 |
0 |
5 |
9 |
11 |
6 |
2006 |
B+ |
6 |
44% |
3 |
15 |
30,695 |
256 |
317 |
70% |
28 |
0 |
4 |
10 |
5 |
9 |
2007 |
B+ |
12 |
100% |
3 |
8 |
25,857 |
86 |
329 |
77% |
31 |
0 |
4 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
2008 |
B+ |
8 |
78% |
3 |
6 |
16,842 |
33 |
296 |
73% |
29 |
1 |
4 |
9 |
15 |
6 |
2009 |
B |
13 |
67% |
3 |
10 |
31,167 |
62 |
254 |
77% |
27 |
2 |
9 |
10 |
28 |
10 |
2010 |
C |
10 |
89% |
2 |
2 |
7,161 |
32 |
44 |
75% |
21 |
0 |
1 |
10 |
9 |
0 |
2011 |
B+ |
14 |
67% |
2 |
5 |
19,071 |
172 |
196 |
78% |
18 |
1 |
0 |
10 |
7 |
4 |
2012 |
B+ |
7 |
67% |
2 |
2 |
3,640 |
42 |
81 |
78% |
22 |
0 |
1 |
10 |
4 |
1 |
2013 |
B+ |
13 |
60% |
2 |
4 |
13,494 |
71 |
214 |
79% |
27 |
0 |
0 |
10 |
6 |
1 |
2014 |
B |
6 |
44% |
2 |
1 |
5,106 |
42 |
141 |
85% |
24 |
1 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
2015 |
B+ |
2 |
25% |
2 |
2 |
12,674 |
20 |
376 |
79% |
35 |
1 |
4 |
9 |
6 |
6 |
2016 |
B− |
22 |
63% |
2 |
7 |
23,052 |
95 |
342 |
69% |
28 |
1 |
1 |
9 |
7 |
5 |
2017 |
B |
2 |
25% |
2 |
4 |
8,614 |
158 |
180 |
79% |
21 |
1 |
2 |
9 |
5 |
6 |
2018 |
B+ |
0 |
0% |
2 |
8 |
11,224 |
56 |
315 |
78% |
42 |
1 |
|
9 |
12 |
4 |
2019 |
B− |
6 |
57% |
3 |
10 |
7,202 |
13 |
71 |
76% |
27 |
1 |
0 |
9 |
8 |
8 |
2020 |
F |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
800 |
1 |
26 |
94% |
20 |
|
|
|
4 |
0 |
2021 |
A– |
4 |
2% |
3 |
3 |
20,677 |
130 |
429 |
89% |
29 |
0 |
0 |
9 |
4 |
3 |
2022 |
A– |
|
|
3 |
8 |
19,179 |
118 |
545 |
92% |
21 |
|
|
9 |
6 |
8 |
2023 |
A |
17 |
75% |
3 |
6 |
30,046 |
57 |
680 |
– |
|
|
|
9 |
9 |
7 |
| Overall total | 203 | – | 128 | 259 | 526,222 | 1,575 | 7,068 | – | 693 | 21 | 102 | 420 | 179 | 94 | |
| Overall average | 4.3 | 0.30% | 2.7 | 5.5 | 10,963 | 33.5 | 150.4 | 0.4 | 16.5 | 0.5 | 2.3 | 8.8 | 3.8 | 2.0 | |
Notes:
Grade: Kirton scale is A+ = extremely strong, striking, standout, historic; A = very strong; A− = strong; B+ = significant; B = substantial; B− = solid; C = small; D = very small; F = failure (including made things worse).
Domestic political management: # communiqué compliments = the number of favourable references to G7/8 members by name. Spread = number of G7/8 members complimented.
Deliberation: # days = the duration of the summit; # statements = number of official statements issued in the leaders' name; # words = number of words contained in the official statements.
Direction setting: # affirmations of G7/8 core values of open democracy, individual liberty and human rights contained in official documents.
Decision making: # commitments contained in the official documents as identified by the G7 Research Group.
Delivery: Compliance with selected commitments assessed as follows: 1975–1989 assessed by George von Furstenberg and Joseph Daniels; 1990–1995 assessed by Ella Kokotsis; 1996–present assessed by the G7 Research Group. # commitments: number of commitments assessed. Scores reflect the latest number of commitments assessed for each year, rather than the smaller number assessed for the G7 Research Group's published compliance reports.
Development of global governance: # ministerials created = number of institutions created at the ministerial level; # official-level groups created = number of institutions created at the officials' level. Institutions are created at or by the summit, or during the hosting year, at least in the form of having one meeting take place.
Participation: # members = number of leaders of full members, including those representing the European Community from the start; Russia started as a participant in 1991 and became a full member in 1998, and stopped participating in 2014; the G4 met in 1974 without Japan and Italy and later that year the G6 (without Canada) met. # participating countries = number of full members plus number of leaders from other countries. # participating international organizations = number of heads of international organizations.
Reproduced from the official website of the 2023 G7 presidency, April 24, 2023
Background. The international community is now at a historic turning point, having experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and being faced with Russia's aggression against Ukraine, which has shaken the very foundation of the international order.
The G7 will deepen discussions to send a strong message that it will advance realistic and practical efforts to take us from "the reality" of the harsh security environment to the "ideal" of a world without nuclear weapons.
First appearance in the G7 Leaders' Communiqué at the Elmau Summit. The G7 will work on issues such as resilient supply chains, non-market policies and practices, and economic coercion.
While the importance of ensuring energy security is reaffirmed in the face of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, the goal to achieve net-zero by 2050 based on the Paris Agreement remains unchanged. The G7 will show its blueprint for various pathways towards resilient transitions, noting different national and regional circumstances, while calling on major emitters to make further efforts.
Given the current food crisis, it is urgently needed to ensure access to affordable, safe, nutritious food for all and to develop resilient food security. To this end, the G7 will identify structural vulnerabilities in the global food system and set pathways to overcome them, while addressing pressing food issues in the short term.
Based on the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, the G7 will build and strengthen the global health architecture, especially prevention, preparedness and response for future pandemics. In addition, the G7 aims to contribute to achieving more resilient, equitable and sustainable universal health coverage (UHC) as well as promoting health innovation to address various health challenges.
Toward achieving all the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs, the G7 will hold discussions on the current development issues with the view of supporting vulnerable people left behind in crisis, taking into account the concept of the "human security" and the "human-centered approach." Responses to opaque and unfair development finance will also be discussed.
Areas such as Gender, Human Rights, Digitalization and Science and Technology will also be highlighted.
* The justice ministerial meeting was added to the list of meetings originally published on January 3, 2023, on the G7 Hiroshima website.
Finance and central bank governors |
Bengaluru |
February 25 |
Foreign ministers |
New Delhi |
March 1–2 |
Finance ministers and central bank governors |
Washington |
April 12–13 |
Development ministers |
Varanasi |
June 11–13 |
Agriculture ministers |
Hyderabad |
June 17 |
Tourism ministers |
Goa |
June 21–22 |
Education ministers |
Pune |
June 22 |
Finance ministers and central bank governors |
Gandhinagar |
July 17–18 |
Labour and employment ministers |
Indore |
July 21 |
Energy ministers |
Goa |
July 22 |
Environment and climate sustainability ministers |
Chennai |
July 28–29 |
Anticorruption ministers |
Kolkata |
August 9–12 |
Ministerial meeting on women empowerment |
Gandhinagar |
August 9–11 |
Joint health-finance ministers |
Gandhinagar |
August 10 |
Digital economy |
Bengaluru |
August 19 |
Health ministers |
Gandhinagar |
August 18-19 |
Culture ministers |
Goa |
August 23 |
Trade and investment ministers |
Jaipur |
August 24–25 |
Joint finance and energy ministers |
New Delhi |
September 8 |
Source: Secretariat for the G7 Hiroshima Summit, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
On May 19th, the G7 Hiroshima Summit Session 1 (Working Lunch) "Toward an International Community Characterized by Cooperation, not Division and Confrontation / Global Economy" was held from 1:45pm for approximately 80 minutes. Global economy and trade was also discussed during the session. The summary of the session is as follows:
1. Prime Minister Kishida stated that the overall main theme of the summit is to confirm the unity of the G7 and strengthen the roles of the G7 toward an international community characterized by cooperation, not division and confrontation, and to demonstrate active and concrete contributions toward this aim. Prime Minister Kishida then stated that he would like to clearly set out as the G7 two pillars, namely upholding the free and open international order based on the rule of law and strengthening outreach with international partners beyond the G7. As a result of discussion, the G7 leaders agreed on the importance of these two perspectives.
2. Regarding global economy, Prime Minister Kishida stated that he has advocated an economic policy of a "New Form of Capitalism," advanced supply-side reforms for sustainable economic growth, emphasized on strengthening "investment in people" along with increasing wages and expanding internal investment, and promoted virtuous cycle of growth and distribution. Through the discussion, the G7 leaders concurred on the importance of close coordination among the G7 as well as the cooperation with international partners towards transition to clean energy economy, reduction of dependency on specific countries, and the making of reliable supply chains.
3. Regarding digital, the G7 leaders confirmed the necessity of governance for generative AI and immersive technologies based on the values of the G7. The leaders agreed that they will have ministers in charge discuss generative AI as "Hiroshima AI process," and have them report the results before the end of this year. Moreover, Prime Minister Kishida stated that he would ask for the G7's cooperation toward the early establishment of an international framework based on an agreement at the ministerial level to materialize Data Free Flow with Trust (DFFT). Based on this discussion, Prime Minister Kishida stated that Japan will contribute as Chair, including making suitable financial contributions.
4. With regard to trade, Prime Minister Kishida mentioned that the free and fair trade system based on rules centered on the WTO is the foundation of global growth and stability. As a result of discussion, the G7 leaders concurred on the necessity to work toward maintaining and strengthening the free and fair trade system, including in WTO reform.
On May 19th, the G7 Hiroshima Summit Session 2 "Ukraine" was held from 15:45pm for approximately 85 minutes. The overview of the session is as follows:
1. The G7 leaders candidly exchanged their views regarding Russia's aggression against Ukraine.
2. Prime Minister Kishida stated that it is essential for the G7 to unite and continue strong support for Ukraine in every aspect and severe sanctions against Russia. Prime Minister Kishida also mentioned that he would like to show strong resolution as the G7 at the G7 Hiroshima Summit to firmly reject Russia's aggression and restore peace in Ukraine.
3. The G7 leaders reaffirmed their unwavering commitment to provide necessary diplomatic, humanitarian and military support for Ukraine and confirmed once again concrete efforts for strengthening sanctions against Russia, including measures against sanction evasion and circumvention. Following this session, the "G7 Leaders' Statement on Ukraine," which touches upon the points above, was released.
On May 19th, the G7 Hiroshima Summit Session 3 "Foreign and Security Policy" was held from 6:55 pm for 100 minutes. The overview of the session is as follows:
1. At the beginning of the session, Prime Minister Kishida stated that any unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force is unacceptable anywhere in the world and that it is essential to show the G7's strong will to uphold the free and open international order based on the rule of law.
2. The G7 leaders exchanged views on the situation in the Indo-Pacific region and reaffirmed that the G7 will continue to closely work together in responding to issues related to China as well as North Korea, including nuclear and missile issues and abductions issue.
3. Regarding nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, Prime Minister Kishida touched upon the meaning of discussing nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation in Hiroshima and stated that maintaining and strengthening the NPT is the only realistic path toward realizing a "world without nuclear weapons", and reaffirmed the G7's commitment to a "world without nuclear weapons."
On May 20th, the G7 Hiroshima Summit Session 4 "Strengthening Engagement with Partners" was held from 10:10am for approximately 75 minutes. The overview of the session is as follows:
1. Prime Minister Kishida stated that it is important to strengthen engagement with international partners beyond the G7 as the presence of emerging countries and developing countries called global south has increased, and to take an approach to respond carefully to various needs that those countries face. In pursuing these efforts, Prime Minister Kishida emphasized on the importance to value human dignity and human security through a people-centered approach.
2. Prime Minister Kishida stated that he hopes to cooperate among the G7 so that concrete outcome could be achieved at the G20 in various issues that the international society faces, such as food, development and health. Prime Minister Kishida also mentioned that he expects to connect the outcome of the G7 to the cooperation with the G20.
3. The G7 leaders concurred that they will share the importance of the principles of the United Nations Charter and the rule of law that the international society should stand by with international partners, respond carefully to various needs of emerging and developing countries regarding challenges such as poverty, energy transition and finance, by such means as establishment of value chains that enable developing countries to carry out processing locally, support through Partnership on Global Infrastructure Investment (PGII) , efforts to fill the development finance gap. and actively support the Chair of the G20 toward G20 Summit in New Delhi in September this year.
On May 20th, the G7 Hiroshima Summit Session 5 "Economic Resilience and Economic Security" was held from 12:10pm for 80 minutes. The overview of the session is as follows:
1. Prime Minister Kishida stated that economic security was discussed for the first time as the agenda of the G7 Summit as it is increasingly important to respond to economic security challenges. The G7 leaders had a candid exchange of views.
2. The G7 leaders affirmed that the G7 will be united in responding to issues such as 1) enhancing resilience of supply chain and critical infrastructure, 2) strengthening our response to non-market policy and practice and economic coercion, 3) appropriately managing critical and emerging technologies. Based on the recognition that economic security is a strategic challenge that the G7 should closely cooperate and tackle, the G7 leaders confirmed their will to closely coordinate in a holistic manner through the G7 framework.
3. The G7 Leaders also discussed on the opportunities and challenges that AI brings. After sharing common awareness of the issue, the G7 leaders exchanged their opinions about the importance of data and overall direction of response.
4. Based on the discussion in this session, the G7 for the first time concurred on sending out comprehensive and concrete message on economic resilience and economic security in the "G7 Leaders' Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security."
5. Likewise, based on the discussion in this session, the G7 leaders announced the "Clean Energy Economic Action Plan" regarding enhancing resilience of supply chain of critical minerals that is necessary for clean energy transition and renewable energy devices manufacturing.
On May 20th, the G7 Hiroshima Summit Session 6 "Working Together to Address Multiple Crises" was held from 3:20pm for 105 minutes. The G7 leaders along with the leaders of 8 invited countries and 7 invited international organizations discussed the issues of food, health, development and gender, among others. The overview of the session is as follows:
1. Prime Minister Kishida touched upon the importance of coordinated response to multiple crises that the world is facing and the leaders of the participating countries and international organizations candidly exchanged their views.
2. Regarding development, to make steady progress for the achievement of the SDGs, the participating countries and organizations reaffirmed that they will advance their efforts toward the effective use of development cooperation and the mobilization of private capital. They also expressed their expectations for promoting concrete investment under the "Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII)" and various reforms including the reform of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs). Furthermore, they concurred on the importance of transparent and fair development finance and the necessity of accelerating the response to debt issues.
3. With regard to food, the participating countries and organizations shared the view that it is of urgent importance to respond to immediate food crisis and establish resilient food security. As a result of the discussion, the leaders of the G7 and invited countries concurred on issuing the "Hiroshima Action Statement for Resilient Global Food Security."
4. As for health, Prime Minister Kishida touched upon the importance of leader-level governance and international norm setting for structuring and strengthening the Global Health Architecture (GHA) as well as a perspective of "soft governance" as gentle coordination among existing organizations, among others. Prime Minister Kishida also explained about the launch of the MCM Delivery Partnership for equitable access (MCDP) based on the principles set out in the "G7 Hiroshima Vision for Equitable Access to Medical Countermeasures," and called on the participating countries and organizations to cooperate with the partnership. After the discussion, they confirmed that they will work together and continue to advance the efforts toward the goals including the achievement of the Universal Health Coverage.
5. Regarding gender, Prime Minister Kishida emphasized the importance of substantively coordinating several efforts such as promotion of "Women, Peace and Security (WPS)" agenda including disaster risk reduction, women's economic independence and others. In response, the participating countries and organizations gave their accent to the idea.
6. In addition, the participating countries and organizations confirmed that they will tackle the challenges related to trade including the WTO reform, toward the success of the 13th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization.
* 8 invited countries and 7 organizations are Australia, Brazil, Comoros (African Union Chair), Cook Island (Pacific Forum Chair), India (G20 Presidency), Indonesia (ASEAN Chair), Republic of Korea, Vietnam, United Nations, International Energy Agency (IEA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), and World Trade Organization (WTO).
On May 20, from 5:40 p.m. to 6:23 p.m., Mr. KISHIDA Fumio, Prime Minister of Japan, together with the Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States of America, and H. E. Dr. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, hosted a side-event on the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) on the sidelines of the G7 Hiroshima Summit. The side-event was attended by G7 leaders (Canada, Germany, Italy), representatives of the countries invited to the G7 Summit (Indonesia, Comoros, Cock Islands, Vietnam, Republic of Korea, India and Australia), and participants from the private sector, and the President of the World Bank. The participants from the private sector included Mr. KOKUBU Fumiya, Chairman of the Japan Foreign Trade Council, Inc., Ms. Jane Fraser, Chief Executive Officer, Citi, Mr. Pekka Lundmark, President and CEO of Nokia, and Mr. Adebayo Ogunlesi, Founding Partner, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Global Infrastructure Partners.
At the side event, G7 expressed their intention to mobilize private capital for infrastructure investment in partner countries, in collaboration with a wide range of actors. Prime Minister Kishida explained the initiatives of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment and the projects that Japan has undertaken under the Partnership. He also stated that Japan is delivering infrastructure investment around the world including Asia, Africa and the Pacific to mobilize more than 65 billion USD in infrastructure assistance and private capital over the five years and that Japan will work to further promote quality infrastructure investment.
After the side-event, the fact sheet was issued which describes the progress of the Partnership to date.
(1) "Factsheet on the G7 PGII"
(2) "G7's Flagship projects of the G7 PGII"
(3) "Japan's Flagship projects of the G7 PGII"
On May 20th, the G7 Hiroshima Summit Session 7 "Common Endeavor for a Resilient and Sustainable Planet" was held from 6:45pm for 100 minutes. The G7 leaders along with the leaders of 8 invited countries and 7 invited international organizations discussed the issues of climate, energy and environment, among others. The overview of the session is as follows:
1. Prime Minister Kishida touched upon the importance of discussing the increasingly serious global issues of climate change, energy and environment in an integrated manner.
2. Regarding climate change and energy, the participating countries and international organizations confirmed that it is necessary to holistically tackle the challenges such as climate change, biodiversity, pollution and others, and that it is also necessary for the G7, Pacific Island Countries, Africa and other regions and countries to work together as the response to "climate crisis" is an urgent task for all over the world. They shared the importance of pursuing the common goal of net zero in various pathways that maximally introduce utilizing renewable energy and energy-saving technologies in accordance with each country's situation in order not to hinder economic growth, with the understanding of energy security, climate crisis and geopolitical risks in an integrated manner. They also shared the necessity of enhancing supply chain resilience of clean energy devices and critical minerals vital for clean energy transition. They further concurred that the assistance that leaves no countries or people vulnerable to climate change by mobilizing climate finance.
3. Regarding environment, the participating countries and organizations reaffirmed that they will strengthen cooperation for advancing concrete efforts on addressing plastic pollution, protecting biodiversity, protecting forests, and addressing marine pollution.
4. In conclusion, Prime Minister Kishida expressed his intention to lead the discussion today to further actions on various occasions such as COP 28, based on the shared recognition above.
* 8 invited countries and 7 organizations are Australia, Brazil, Comoros (African Union Chair), Cook Island (Pacific Forum Chair), India (G20 Presidency), Indonesia (ASEAN Chair), Republic of Korea, Vietnam, United Nations, International Energy Agency (IEA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), and World Trade Organization (WTO).
On May 21st, the G7 Hiroshima Summit Session 8 "Ukraine" was held from 10:45am for 60 minutes. The G7 leaders and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who attended as a guest, discussed the situation in Ukraine. The overview of the session is as follows:
1. At the beginning of the session, Prime Minister Kishida expressed his sincere respect for the courage and perseverance of the Ukrainian people standing up to Russia's aggression against Ukraine and overcoming harsh winter. Prime Minister Kishida also stated that the G7 welcomes and supports President Zelenskyy continuing sincere efforts toward just and lasting peace.
2. Moreover, the G7 leaders concurred that they will continue their unwavering commitment to provide diplomatic, financial, humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine and reaffirmed their determination to restore peace in Ukraine and uphold the free and open international order based on the rule of law.
On May 21st, the G7 Hiroshima Summit Session 9 "Toward a Peaceful, Stable and Prosperous World" was held from 12:00 am for approximately 90 minutes. The G7 leaders along with the leaders of 8 invited countries and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who attended as a guest, discussed how to respond to the challenges to peace and stability that the international society is facing. The overview of the session is as follows:
1. Prime Minister Kishida emphasized that any unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force is unacceptable anywhere in the world and strongly appealed the necessity to end Russia's aggression against Ukraine as soon as possible and uphold the free and open international order based on the rule of law. Prime Minister Kishida stated that it is important to promote realistic efforts toward the realization of a "world without nuclear weapons" to ensure peace of the international society in a increasingly severe security environment, and Russia's nuclear threat, let alone its use is absolutely unacceptable.
2. Regarding the situation in Ukraine, the G7 leaders expressed grave concern on human suffering and negative impact on the global economy, including heightening energy and food insecurity, caused by Russia's aggression against Ukraine.
3. The leaders had a discussion on various challenges to peace and stability that the international society is facing, including in the Indo-Pacific and Africa, and shared the recognition that the following points are important:
- All countries should adhere to the principles of the United Nations (UN) Charter, including respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- Confrontation should be resolved peacefully through dialogue, and we support a just and durable peace that is based on respect for international law and the principles of the UN Charter.
- Any unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force is unacceptable anywhere in the world.
- We strive to uphold the free and open international order based on the rule of law.
Some leaders also pointed out the need for realistic effort towards a "world without nuclear weapons" as well as the need to reform the UN including its Security Council.
4. The leaders of the participating countries reaffirmed that on such basis they will continue dialogue and address the challenges to peace and stability that the international society is facing.
* 8 invited countries are Australia, Brazil, Comoros (African Union Chair), Cook Island (Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Chair), India (G20 Presidency), Indonesia (ASEAN Chair), Republic of Korea and Vietnam.
Subject |
Statement |
Communiqué |
Total |
Ukraine |
67 |
1 |
68 |
Nuclear disarmament |
13 |
4 |
17 |
Economic resilience and security |
39 |
21 |
60 |
Clean energy (economy) |
61 |
23 |
84 |
Food security |
85 |
13 |
98 |
Indo-Pacific |
– |
3 |
3 |
Economy, finance, development |
– |
41 |
41 |
Climate change |
– |
37 |
37 |
Environment |
– |
41 |
41 |
Energy |
– |
23 |
23 |
Trade |
– |
11 |
11 |
Health |
– |
30 |
30 |
Labour |
– |
17 |
17 |
Education |
– |
7 |
7 |
Digital |
– |
18 |
18 |
Science and technology |
– |
8 |
8 |
Gender |
– |
21 |
21 |
Human rights |
– |
3 |
3 |
Refugees and migration |
– |
15 |
15 |
Democracy |
– |
5 |
5 |
Terrorism, extremism, crime and corruption |
– |
20 |
20 |
Regional affairs |
– |
1 |
1 |
China |
– |
9 |
9 |
North Korea |
– |
1 |
1 |
Myanmar |
– |
1 |
1 |
Afghanistan |
– |
1 |
1 |
Iran |
– |
1 |
1 |
Israel and Palestine |
– |
2 |
2 |
Syria |
– |
3 |
3 |
Middle East and North Africa |
– |
3 |
3 |
Central Asia |
– |
1 |
1 |
Africa |
– |
4 |
4 |
Sudan |
– |
1 |
1 |
Latin America and Caribbean |
– |
7 |
7 |
Kosovo-Serbia |
– |
0 |
0 |
 — 
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