From Covid to the world’s climate, to the Good Friday Agreement, here’s everything you need to know about what Biden and Johnson discussed on June 10, 2021, at G7.
President Biden and Prime Minister Johnson met for a bilateral meeting on Thursday.
In a joint statement after the meeting, they laid out the global vision for a new Atlantic Charter to deepen cooperation in democracy and human rights, defense and security, science and innovation, and economic prosperity, efforts to tackle the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and emerging health threats.
The US and UK committed to further enhance the world’s strongest bilateral defense, security, and intelligence partnership to overcome the evolving threats of the 21st century. This includes threats and challenges associated with: cyberspace, foreign interference, harmful influence campaigns, illicit finance, violent conflict and extremism, and terrorism in all its forms.
The US and UK will work to secure the international order of the future with NATO. Last month, the U.K.’s new aircraft carrier, HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH, sailed on her first operational mission with the U.S. and U.K. F-35 aircraft on board – a demonstration of the unique interoperability of our Armed Forces.
“We will develop a new landmark bilateral technology partnership in 2021/22,” Biden and Johnson said in a statement.
On trade, they committed to deepening and strengthening the economic and trading partnership. They agreed to the rapid settlement of the Large Civil Aircraft dispute.
On climate, they will rally all countries to strengthen their climate ambitions to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, keep the goal of limiting global average temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and bend the curve of biodiversity loss by 2030.
On Public Health, they are determined to work together to overcome the current pandemic. Their effort will be underpinned by collaboration between the new U.K. Health Security Agency (U.K.HSA) Centre for Pandemic Preparedness and the new U.S. National Center for Epidemic Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics.
The two countries will scale up surveillance and genomic sequencing capacity, as well as variant assessment capabilities. They welcomed the plan to establish an integrated global surveillance system (the Global Pandemic Radar) and commit to working with the WHO and other partners.
Regarding post-pandemic travel, they “Look forward to normalizing two-way travel between our two countries. They will establish a joint U.K.-U.S. Experts’ Working Group, to share expertise and provide recommendations to leaders on the return of safe and sustainable international travel, demonstrating the commitment of both countries to tackle COVID-19 together,” Johnson and Biden said.
The two leaders will work together to help increase global vaccine supply through COVAX and its partner organizations CEPI, Gavi, UNICEF, and WHO.
The countries will also support a transparent and evidence-based independent process for the next phase of the WHO-convened COVID-19 origins study, including in China, and for investigating outbreaks of unknown origin in the future.
On the issue of Northern Ireland, the U.K. and the U.S. committed to working closely with all parties to the Agreement to protect its vision for reconciliation, consent, equality, respect for rights, and parity of esteem.