From growth to prosperity and well-being: How did G20 leaders deal with labour market issues?
Reading recommendation: For the G20 – Let’s return to the original idea
The G20 need to get back to their routes
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.
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When the finance ministers of the G7 countries proposed the G20 in the late 1990s, a good sense of realism prevailed. They recognized that addressing issues of global finance required the political support from—and involvement of—emerging market economies. This view proved prescient in seeking policy responses to the 2007–08 global financial crisis. The leaders of the G20 met at their first summit in Washington D.C. in 2008 to agree on measures to resolve the crisis through dialogues among the “systemically relevant” countries.From Taormina to Hamburg: A fruitful G7-G20 relationship?
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.
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For Africa, the G20 Hamburg Summit is a door stopper, not a bookend
The news emerging from Hamburg were dominated by the narrative of the emerging 19 +1 on issues such as climate change or trade protectionism. Yvanka Trump replacing her father in the US seat was a particularly juicy bit, with few realizing that happened when the leaders were discussing Africa. Street protests and the 9th Beethoven symphony played in the brand-new Elbphilharmonie capped what was after all a fair attempt by Germany and Chancellor Angela Merkel to give direction to a group that has become a target of cynical criticism.
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