Sausage brawl overshadows Boris Johnson’s G7 meeting

Sausage noise. This is how the charged dispute between Britain and the European Union over the Brexit deal in Northern Ireland was described in British newspapers.

The issue was not formally on the agenda when seven of the world’s richest democracies – the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan – gathered for a summit in Carbis Bay in southwest England. But it is still said to have been brought up at several meetings held behind closed doors this weekend.

In a two-man meeting, Boris Johnson is said to have asked Macron, among other things, what he would say if someone tried to ban the transportation of sausages between Paris and Toulouse. According to British diplomatic sources, Macron replied that it was not a good comparison, because Great Britain and Northern Ireland were “two different countries”.

French diplomatic sources said somewhat sarcastically To the various media that “even Boris Johnson should know that Northern Ireland is not part of Britain”. But for Johnson, the union of the states (or territories) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (which is the official name) is of course of paramount importance.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called Macron’s comment “offensive”.

– Some EU leaders here in Carbis Bay have described Northern Ireland as their own country – and that is wrong. It only creates increasing contradictions. “We will not talk about Catalonia in this way or about Corsica in France,” Raab said on Sunday.

Macron seemed to be trying to lighten up the issue on Sunday when he said France had “never questioned British sovereignty over its territory”.

But the issue cast a shadow over the G7 summit, which could otherwise be considered successful, compared to the past four years of diplomatic stumbling over the former US president.

“Diplomacy is back,” Joe Biden wrote on Twitter when he arrived at the G7 meeting, and this is also the strongest impression after the meeting. A number of new or old goals, including those related to climate policy, have been set as a direct result of re-establishing US support for the Paris Agreement.

The leaders of the Group of Seven agreed To push for a global minimum corporate tax of 15 per cent, which could be hugely important in the long run.

But several initiatives have been announced, such as international investment in green infrastructure and an early initiativeمبادرة Warning systems for new epidemics (“Global Pandemic Radar”) needs more concrete form before it becomes a reality.