Six lame ducks and Giorgia Meloni: Meet the G7 class of 2024

ROME — With the war in Ukraine well into its third year, far-right parties storming the power centers of Europe and the Middle East in flames, the democratic world urgently needs strong leadership from the G7 this week.

Dream on.

The G7 summit in the southern Italian coastal resort of Borgo Egnazia features arguably the weakest gathering of leaders the group has mustered for years. Most of the attendees are distracted by elections or domestic crises, disillusioned by years in office, or clinging desperately to power.

France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Rishi Sunak are both fighting snap election campaigns they called in last-ditch efforts to reverse their flagging fortunes.

Germany’s Olaf Scholz was humiliated by far-right nationalists in last weekend’s EU Parliament election and could soon be toppled himself.

Justin Trudeau, prime minister for nine years in Canada, has spoken openly about quitting his “crazy” job.

Japan’s Fumio Kishida is enduring his lowest personal ratings ahead of a leadership contest later this year. 

The democratic world urgently needs strong leadership from the G7 this week. | Stefano Guidi/Getty Images

And then there’s Joe Biden. 

The 81-year-old U.S. president’s son, Hunter, was found guilty of gun charges on Tuesday, barely two weeks before his father’s first crucial debate with a resurgent Donald Trump in a presidential campaign the Democrat is in serious danger of losing. 

“With the exception of Meloni, the leaders at the G7 summit are all pretty weak,” said Ivo Daalder, who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO under former President Barack Obama. “Trudeau is probably not going to win the next election. Biden has a tough election race. Scholz is weakened. Macron is weakened. Sunak is a ‘dead man walking,’ and Kishida has serious issues at home as well.”

Tolkien fan

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, on the other hand, can’t stop winning. 

Two years after coming to power as leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, the pugnacious, folksy Tolkien fan from a blue-collar district of Rome increased her party’s popular share of the vote in Sunday’s European election. She’s now poised to play a critical role shaping the future direction of EU policy in Brussels. 

But Meloni doesn’t lead a superpower. On the international stage there’s only so much that Italy, the world’s ninth-largest economy, can do. 

For months, under Italian stewardship, officials in Europe and the U.S. have been trying to hammer out their differences to announce a G7 plan to leverage Russian assets frozen in Western banks to provide a huge loan to Ukraine. 

But on the eve of the summit there’s still no sign of a deal. Instead, European officials are expressing palpable anger at a U.S. proposal for sharing the burden on financing as unreasonably one-sided and a potentially massive liability for the EU. 

Ukraine, which is still struggling to repel Russia’s invasion, needs the money urgently. 

If the loan proposal can’t be signed off in Puglia, the talks risk dragging deep into summer and perilously close to November’s U.S. election. Few European officials are confident that if Trump wins, he will prove a reliable ally in Ukraine’s war against Russia. And regardless of the outcome, a presidential campaign reaching its democracy-altering climax won’t be a propitious moment to strike multilateral deals with America. 

On the international stage there’s only so much that little Italy, the world’s ninth biggest economy, can do. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

That doesn’t make a G7 deal any more likely. The men at the summit table all have reason to be preoccupied by domestic concerns, none more so than the French president, enmeshed in a snap election campaign of his own devising. “It’s going to be very hard for Macron to agree to the use of Russian assets before the fact that he has an election,” Daalder said. 

Even his own party colleagues don’t want Macron’s face on their campaign posters or even to hear his voice on the radio, fearing he’s now so toxic that he’ll lead them to electoral disaster. 

The dean

In Canada, Trudeau once aspired to be “dean” of the G7. Despite upheavals around the world, Trudeau’s office still believes the G7 functions “extremely effectively,” with one senior Canadian official saying: “I don’t think the band is on the verge of breaking up.”

But with Canada’s next election on the horizon, the sun could be setting on Trudeau too. At this moment he’s widely expected to lose in a landslide to his main challenger, firebrand Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

“We have seen around the world a rise of populist, right-wing forces in just about every democracy,” Trudeau said Monday in Quebec City in response to a reporter’s question about the rise of the right in France. “It is of concern to see political parties choosing to instrumentalize anger, fear, division, anxiety.”

With Canada’s next election on the distant horizon, the sun could be setting on Justin Trudeau too. | Pool Photo by Jordan Pettit via Getty Images

In the U.K., Sunak is facing a historic defeat for his Conservative Party after 14 fractious years in power. Polls indicate the July 4 election will result in a center-left landslide for opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer, so whatever Sunak says in Puglia this week will likely draw polite smiles. 

Biden is also heading to Italy amid a looming election and unfavorable polls. He’s having to make big promises to voters about what a second term could deliver with no guarantees he’ll be in office to execute them. 

Yet even if the leaders can’t make a breakthrough on funding for Ukraine, the summit marks an opportunity for their host, at least. 

Meloni’s moment

According to Italian officials, speaking like others on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, Meloni will use the summit to further Italy’s interests. She’s also set to engage in talks with EU leaders over who should be handed the bloc’s top jobs, including the potential reappointment of Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president. To secure a second term, von der Leyen needs both the backing of EU leaders like Meloni and a majority in the newly elected Parliament. 

“We have emerged as the government most strengthened, going against the trend,” Meloni told RTL radio Monday. “Among the governments of big European countries, we are certainly the strongest. I don’t intend to use this result for myself but to use each vote for the center right to get results for Italians.”

The agenda that Meloni has set for the summit cleaves to Italy’s strategic interests — including Africa, migration and the Mediterranean. Her government aims to harness investment in African infrastructure to reduce the appeal of mass migration to Europe, while her team also wants to strike deals with African countries to block migration. 

Meloni’s electoral success will help her draw support for her pet topics, said Giovanni Orsina, professor of political history at Luiss University in Rome. “With a G7 led by Italy and taking place in Italy, Meloni can enter with all her political strength.”

While Rome’s influence is limited compared to major G7 players such as the U.S., Orsina suggested, Meloni is “certainly very strong now,” and “if she is skillful she can end up with an important international success, managing to get the issues important to her on the agenda.

“Not many leaders are able to gain votes after two years governing.”

Miles Herszenhorn contributed reporting.