Germany To Invite India To G7 Summit In June

Germany took a U-turn and has decided to invite India for the G7 summit in Bavaria in June, news agency WION News reported. Earlier, news agency Bloomberg reported that Germany was unhappy with India regarding its stance on Russia over the war on Ukraine and was mulling to drop from the list of international guests.

Senegal, South Africa and Indonesia are among the other nations who will be invited as international guests to the G7 meeting. India, according to the Bloomberg report, was on the list but that was before the war on Ukraine began.

Germany, who is chair of the G7 grouping, will host the nations between June 26-28 at Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian Alps. A formal invite will be sent to India soon, WION News reported. According to their report, the German government dismissed reports that the government was planning to drop India from the list of guest nations.

This will be the fourth consecutive year that India has been invited to the G7 summit. Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the G7 summit in Biarritz in France when Emmanuel Macron invited him as a goodwill partner. In 2020 and 2021, PM Modi attended the summits hosted by former US president Donald Trump and UK prime minister Boris Johnson virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

PM Modi will also visit Germany for the 6th Intergovernmental Consultations(IGC). The IGCs are a series of meetings where the heads of states of both nations visit each other’s nation every two years alternately. Then German chancellor Angela Merkel visited India in 2019. This would also be the first direct meeting between PM Modi and Olaf Scholz after the latter was appointed as the chancellor of Germany. Both nations have shared cordial relations.

Germany and India are also likely to discuss the situation in Ukraine as Germany is dependent on Russia for its energy while India has an arms deal with Russia and both have faced pressure from the UK and the US to sever all ties with Moscow. There is a possibility that both nations may find a common ground as other G7 members try to form a coalition of nations opposing Russia with India as a lead member – a situation which is also highly unlikely given India’s non-aligned approach.

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