President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a new Atlantic Charter on Thursday, modeled after the 1941 agreement, that outlines eight key areas on which the U.S. and the United Kingdom plan to collaborate,
NBC News reports.
The revamped charter, which comes during Biden's first trip abroad as president, says it builds "on the commitments and aspirations set out eighty years ago, affirms our ongoing commitment to sustaining our enduring values and defending them against new and old challenges."
Those commitments include defending democracy, reaffirming the importance of collective security and ensuring a fair and open global trading system, the document said.
Biden and Johnson agreed to the revamped accord during a bilateral meeting Thursday at Carbis Bay, Cornwall, in the southwest of England on Thursday ahead of the G-7 summit with other world leaders, which starts Friday.
Speaking to reporters from St. Ives afterward, Biden said he had a "very productive meeting" with Johnson and said they discussed "ambitious" goals on climate change. The president added that they talked about "shared sacrifices" service members from both countries made in Afghanistan.
The charter commits to combating the modern challenges of cyberthreats and climate change and to bringing the pandemic to an end. As a result of the agreement, Biden and Johnson will work to reopen travel between the U.S. and the U.K. as soon as possible. They plan to create a new travel task force that will make recommendations about safely reopening international travel.
To help bring an end to the pandemic globally, the two leaders are expected to agree to work together on genomic sequencing and reviewing Covid-19 variants.
The Atlantic Charter was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1941, outlining their goals for after World War II. Johnson’s office described it as “one of the greatest triumphs of U.K. and U.S. relations and did more than any other agreement to shape the world order, leading directly to the creation of the U.N. and NATO.”
