Giorgia Meloni had the last word. Abortion is absent from the G7 commitments, due to the resistance of Italy, the host country, to include this subject with high symbolic value. It became the main point of friction at the summit, against a backdrop of tensions between the Italian prime minister and the French president.
In the final declaration published on the evening of Friday June 14, the leaders of the seven richest democracies on the planet made no direct reference to the right to abortion. This is a significant change compared to the last summit, in Hiroshima, in 2023, when the press release showed their commitment to “access to safe and legal abortion and post-abortion care services”.
The subject gave rise to a standoff behind the scenes between the delegations. The United States, France and the European Union, in particular, wanted to keep this wording. Paris even wanted to strengthen it.
They must face the Italian veto: the file goes back to the level of leaders, and the President of the Italian Council, at the head of an ultraconservative party and who holds the rotating presidency of the G7, categorically refuses to write again in black and white the formulation approved last year.
No agreement found
“We reiterate our commitments from the Hiroshima Leaders’ Declaration to universal, adequate, affordable and quality access to health services for women, including sexual and reproductive health and rights comprehensively for all”confines itself to saying the final declaration published in Borgo Egnazia, in Puglia. “We were defending what was agreed in Hiroshima where the text was more explicit, but it was not possible to find an agreement”, explained a senior EU official. He nevertheless judged ” important “ that is mentioned “the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights”.
On the rights of LGBTQIA+ communities, the Italian G7 text is also less exhaustive than that of 2023, even if it clearly mentions a “deep concern about the decline in the rights of women, girls and LGBTQIA+ people around the world, especially in times of crisis”.
Likewise, in 2023 the G7 expressed the need to protect and support “diversity, particularly in terms of sexual orientation and gender identity”. In the 2024 declaration, any mention of “gender identity” has disappeared.
Tensions between France and Italy
The dispute came to light in Puglia on Thursday June 13, in the form of a face-to-face between Emmanuel Macron, champion of centrist progressivism, and Giorgia Meloni, who leads a post-fascist group.
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Asked by the press about the absence of the word “abortion”the French president said ” regret it “ all in “respectful” a policy that derives from “sovereign choice” Italians. “We don’t have the same choices. France has integrated women’s right to abortion and the freedom to dispose of one’s body into its Constitution.he said. “It’s not the same sensitivities that there are in your country today”he told an Italian journalist, neither “a vision that is shared across the political spectrum”.
And while he is engaged in a high-risk electoral battle after having called early legislative elections, and is threatened with having to cohabit in a month with a far-right government, he seemed to make an example of this “battle of values” which he put at the center of his campaign.
This outing angered the Italian Prime Minister, whose far-right government introduced a law, passed in Parliament, to authorize anti-abortion activists to access public health system consultation clinics for women considering having a voluntary termination. of pregnancy (IVG). “This is a serious mistake” of “campaign using a valuable forum like the G7”she retorted to Emmanuel Macron, while rejecting the controversy, based according to her on “bad faith”since the declaration refers to the text concluded in Hiroshima.
The clash made the headlines on Friday June 14 in the entire Italian press, a sign for the latter of rising tensions between a French president weakened by the defeat of his camp in the European elections and a head of the Italian government who, on the contrary, is , reinforced output from these same elections.