Ursula von der Leyen – 2022 Speech at the G20 Summit Session on Food and Energy Security

Dear President Widodo, colleagues, the G20 is a critical forum to address global issues.

We must end this war.

Russia’s war is not only unjustified, unprovoked and illegal, it is causing immense suffering in Ukraine and damage to the global economy.

Like many around this table, the EU condemns this war.

And the G20 must now work together to address the severe global consequences of the war.

Let me address two points:

First, the food crisis.

The EU is doing its utmost to alleviate the situation:

Just to set the record again straight. There are no sanctions on agri food products and fertilisers.

We support full-heartedly the Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the Secretary General Guterres and President Erdoğan. It needs to be extended.

In addition, in the European Union, we set up alternative transport routes to bring agri-food products out of Ukraine, which we call Solidarity Lanes. Since May, more than 15 million tonnes have been exported through these routes and we are further increasing their capacity.

And we are stepping up our global food security aid by another 210 million euros, thus we are mobilising up to 8 billion euros over the next 3 years for food assistance and to increase local food production.

On fertilisers, that of course include ammonia, we facilitate access and movement of fertilisers and we provide financial support. In addition, we are working with the African-Caribbean Pacific countries on innovation to develop the next generation of fertilisers.

Second, the energy crisis.

With regard to energy, Russia’s war was an eye-opener to the European Union. We see literally, that Russia – instead of selling gas – prefers to flare gas.

This tightens the global energy market and leads to skyrocketing prices.

We therefore support the introduction of an oil price cap. This will also strongly benefit the low- and middle- income countries

Our best response to this is to speed up the green transition towards clean energy. Clean energy is the only answer to both the energy crisis and the climate crises.

And there are huge global opportunities in this, too. In the next five alone Europe will invest at least 4 billion euros in renewable energy, like hydrogen, through our Global Gateway investment strategy. And this will unleash massive private investment as well.

This all shows how relevant the G20 is in addressing these global issues.

We are of course grateful to the Indonesian leaderships and I am looking forward to the upcoming Presidency of India.