Formally the debut of the new Italian prime minister at the G7 summit.
In reality Mario Draghi knows most of the interlocutors he will meet today very well, albeit in virtual format.
In what is in fact a pre-summit wanted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson - who has the president of the G7 and who has already set the summit in attendance for the month of June in Cornwall - there is another important news, which it sweeps away a very cumbersome past: the arrival of US President Joe Biden and of an America, that of post-Trump, much more open to dialogue and less eager to turn the tables.
Draghi will connect to the summit entirely dedicated to the Covid emergency, in particular to vaccines, with the belief that it is necessary to accelerate.
And from this point of view, the comparison with other countries, Britain in the lead, is fundamental.
This is the model to which the premier looks and to which he refers when he invites us to "learn from the countries that have moved faster than us, immediately having adequate quantities of vaccines".
After all, according to the premier, the speed in the diffusion of vaccines is also essential to prevent variants from taking over.
A topic that Draghi could also address with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, where a possible meeting is already underway next week.
Also with the other European leaders on the other hand, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, there is full agreement on the need for integration and acceleration in the management of the emergency.
But the first G7 with Biden is also an opportunity for the atlantist Draghi as for the other leaders (starting with the Canadian Justin Trudeau, Trump's 'close friend') to take a breath and start a new relationship with the United States. also in the posture to be assumed towards Russia and China.
The new course was indicated by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at the G7 of Finance Ministers: the United States, he said, has multilateralism, the strengthening of alliances and their commitment at the international level as a "priority".
Obviously the virtual format does not allow the possibility of bilateral, more or less formal.
But Draghi's intention remains, pending the face-to-face, to lay the foundations to structure that "strategic and essential" relationship with France and Germany that he spoke about in the Senate to revive the European economy from the rubble of Covid.
Furthermore, an exchange with Boris Johnson is not excluded given the common commitments that Italy and Great Britain will have, starting with Cop26.
Among the topics of the summit also the need to arrive at a global vaccine plan, welcoming the UN appeal.
The more extensive and faster the vaccination, the sooner the world can start rolling again.
In short, speed is the watchword.
Not only for the present, but also for the future: the ambition that Johnson will present to his colleagues is in fact to reduce the time to develop new vaccines against emerging diseases to 100 days, to avoid the problems experienced with Covid for which we it took 300.
