The G20 Finance Track remains on track after the Hamburg Summit. The final statement reads: “An open and resilient financial system, grounded in agreed international standards, is crucial to supporting sustainable growth”. Sounds familiar? It should. Leaders recognized the need of “effective and representative global economic and financial institutions to underpin growth and sustainable development”. No news here, either.
Blog Series: What remains of the G20 Hamburg Summit?
In the topsy-turvy world of the G20, women’s economic empowerment – a controversial issue given the poor record of some G20 members – has become an area where it seems easier – relatively! – to build consensus. Praise, or blame, First Daughter Ivanka Trump to promote the gender economic agenda with her father. Or admire Angela Merkel’s diplomatic skills given that, earlier this year, she picked gender equality as one of the few items that were unlikely to be stumped on by the new US administration.
At its creation the G20 was meant to facilitate coordination, cooperation and problem-solving among key actors in a specific policy field, which then was global financial stability. The G20 was not meant to be a jack-of-all-trades, offering welcoming words and restating support for long-accepted and previously reconfirmed goals, as most subsequent G20 summits did.
Only six weeks went by between the Taormina G7 and Hamburg G20 meetings, which were both chaired by a major EU Member State. A substantive link between the two summits was therefore to be expected. Indeed, at least to some extent, a useful connection was set in motion. The results of these two events seem to suggest an informal – but organic – relation between the diplomatic and cooperative efforts of the much narrower and more homogeneous G7 with the G20 summit.
