Strengthening the economic clout of the G7 through public-private cooperation and urgently narrowing the competitiveness gap. This is, according to B7-among the most influential Engagement Group reserved for G7 industry-the high road to addressing the transitions that are reshaping the economy.
This is the central message of the Final Declaration that the industry gathered at the B7 Summit, the highlight of the B7 Italy 2024 organized by Confindustria and led by Emma Marcegaglia, developed ahead of the G7 Italy Summit in June.
B7 Chair Emma Marcegaglia, delivered to Council President Giorgia Meloni the recommendations of G7 industries on the main challenges of the global economic agenda. Priorities that will be presented to the Ministers of the G7 Presidency, the Presidents of the Business Federations of the G7 countries, the most influential global CEOs and the Summits of the major International and Multilateral Organizations.
The success of the G7 depends on the economic strength of all its components, the ability to reduce any form of protectionism, enhance the benefits of multilateralism and converge the industrial policies of individual states toward an integrated platform. While sharing concerns about economic security, industry calls for keeping markets open to stimulate trade and reduce competitiveness gaps, while aligning export and investment control policies.
Geopolitics permeates the economy, investment and production. In this sense, G7 cohesion is crucial to cope with growing conflict and instability beyond its borders. Cooperation must extend to strategic partners such as Africa, strengthening their resilience and addressing issues of extreme urgency such as critical dependencies, bottlenecks in global value chains, emergency management, common security mechanisms, and responding to economic coercion from nonmarket economies.
In summary, the priorities found in the Final Declaration:
– Maximize the benefits of AI to increase productivity and economic resilience, streamline global value chains, and optimize infrastructure planning, natural resource management, energy demand forecasting, and climate change response.
– Strengthen international trade and resilience of global value chains by promoting collaborations among G7 and with developing countries, sharing regulatory and normative models to prevent supply chain disruptions, removing technical and tariff barriers, and refraining from adopting new ones.
– Address energy, environmental and climate challenges, to ensure that policies and regulations of G7 countries progressively converge while simultaneously ensuring energy security, competitiveness and decarbonization of the economy.
– Stimulate the data economy and digital technologies to make Data Free Flow with Trust (DFFT) fully operational through continuous dialogue with industry.
– Enhance the potential of talent and improve the resilience of welfare systems by reforming education systems at all levels to adapt to cultural and technological changes and facilitate the transition from education to the labor market.
