G-7 Meet

Venue: Kruen (Germany)

Leaders from the Group of Seven (G7) industrial nations backed a tough line towards Moscow at the start of a summit in the Bavarian Alps, with US President Barack Obama urging the gathering to stand up to Russian aggression in Ukraine.EU leaders agreed in March that sanctions imposed over Russia would stay until the Minsk ceasefire agreement was fully implemented. 

HIGHLIGHTS:

• European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, voiced exasperation with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who has dismissed the latest aid-for-reform proposal from international creditors as “absurd”. Athens is running out of cash and will default on its debt, a move that could end up pushing it out of the euro zone, if it fails to reach a deal with its European partners and the IMF in the coming weeks.
• Group of Seven leaders agreed to wean their economies off carbon fuels and supported a global goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but they stopped short of agreeing their own immediate binding targets.
• In a communique issued after their two-day summit in Bavaria, the G7 leaders said they backed reducing global greenhouse gas emissions at the upper end of a range of 40 to 70 per cent by 2050, using 2010 as a basis. The range was recommended by the IPCC, the United Nations’ climate-change panel. They also backed a global target for limiting the rise in average global temperatures to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial levels.

By: Vishal