The G-7, which used to be the G-8 until Russia was asked to leave, is important as a summit of the leaders of the world’s seven largest economies. The president of the European Commission also attends. And lately they’ve started inviting other, non-western, countries that are significant economies. The guests don’t take part in the discussions but presumably have networking opportunities. The G-7 itself deals with big questions of world affairs, economics, finance, politics, and security. . They take steps towards improving WTO or dealing with China. They also coordinate more detailed action in the case of Ukraine. In the case of Russia, they have agreed on sanctions.
There’s another body called the G-20: this is newer and includes the G-7 and also countries such as China India, the Republic of Korea, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and so on. Russia is still in the G-20. The G-20 has had an impact in the field of taxation and other financial issues in particular. The OECD has played a role as support for the G-20 in several areas, including finance and taxation. The OECD describes the G-20 as “the premier forum for international economic cooperation”, which is surely going too far, but it’s quite important.
But let’s not overlook the G-24. These are the largest developing countries, with China also invited. Here it’s the IMF that has a support role, in fact providing accommodation also.
But Brazil, Russia, India, , China and South Africa are also the founding members of the BRICS, which now has rapidly growing ambitions and membership. Here the focus is on what we might call the non-G-7, but more flexible than the G-24. The BRICS look for a more balanced international governance of economic affairs. They have floated the idea of a BRICS currency to compete with the dollar. They have established another development bank, the New Development Bank.
Then again, there’s the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. China and Russia are members, as are the central Asian republics, together with India, Pakistan, and Iran. This again has an economic development focus, but also a political and security focus.
And let’s not forget other regional groups, such as ASEAN, Mercosur, APEC, European Political Community (M. Macron’s invention) and a hundred others.
Apart from the difficulty of the issues themselves, the proliferation of groups complicates the process of policy formulation. Which minister should attend? Is this organisation important? Is it maybe not so important but there’s something tricky on the agenda? Or is there perhaps an opportunity to include something we would like on the agenda? Who else is going? What will be the key issues at the next meeting? Should other ministries be involved? And so on. Just one forthcoming meeting raises difficult issues for the civil servants concerned. And with so many summits on the horizon, it gets even more complex. Policies in agriculture, industry, trade, energy, and technology are already intertwined: having different issues addressed by different bodies with different interests at different times makes analysis and conclusions even more difficult. As if it wasn’t already hard enough to make national policy consistent with international policy.
Resources are needed for preparing the meetings. A draft agenda, discussion papers, and a closing statement are essential. Who’s going to do this? Who’s going to check things out at the national level, make sure that everyone’s on board? Some other countries have to be on side: we’d better talk to them, and that could difficult, because of that other thing. And that background paper isn’t strong enough. It all takes time. But the meeting’s very soon. Oh, wait….
We forgot about the World Economic Forum. And there’s that AI Summit. Oh.
When you read the final communiqué from one of these summits, and it seems very bland, don’t assume there was some tricky issue that couldn’t be agreed. It might be that, between the last forum and the next forum, they just didn’t have enough time to do the prep.