Europe-focused G20 summit needs more concrete global actions

Europe-focused G20 summit needs more concrete global actions

The seaside city of Cannes, decorated with sweet hyacinths and candy statute, might be written into history in the way it held a summit of 20 major economies that, unprecedented but not unexpectedly, focused mainly on Europe.

Top leaders of the G20 wrapped up the two-day summit on Friday afternoon with a bunch of common commitments that fell short of concrete measures except for those tackling the eurozone’s debt crisis.

"There’s nothing objectionable in the summit’s communiqué if one takes it at face value, but it is even vaguer than communiqués generally are," noted Daniel Kaufmann, senior fellow with the U.S. think tank Brookings Institution.

EUROPE, EUROPE, AND EUROPE

G20 leaders agreed to strengthen the resources of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help distressed European countries and also hailed Italy’s commitment to put its austerity scheme under the IMF and European Commission’s monitoring, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at the conclusion of the summit.

The summit, which happened to be under the French presidency, had been long expected to be dominated by the worsening debt crisis in Europe, while the Greek referendum drama only elevated the sense of urgency among G20 leaders and thus officially eclipsed the global platform designed for global economic cooperation.

Due to the shock referendum plan thrown out by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, Sarkozy and other summit participants, mainly eurozone leaders, had gone through rounds of emergency meetings and crisis talks before the Greek popular vote was eventually out of the question.

On the first day of the summit, hundreds of international correspondents gathering in the press center also felt the frustration when a scheduled press conference by EU top officials Van Rompuy and Barroso had been pending for almost two hours before its cancellation.

And the moment the Greek issue was taken care of, Italy immediately climbed to the top of the summit’s attention. Mr. Berlusconi managed to calm down other G20 leaders with his cooperative commitment that had been written into the final communiqué of the summit.

"The atmosphere today has nothing to do with last week," Sarkozy said in an apparent big relief referring to the Greek drama that had made headlines everywhere and caused market panic.

While questioned by a BBC reporter if other economies were trying to change the government in Greece and Italy, Sarkozy gave a definite no, defensively saying "you come from the island and you can’t understand the subtleties of the European construction."

DEALS ON GLOBAL ISSUES

Apart from the roller-coaster progress concerning Europe, G20 leaders probably looked beyond the debt crisis at the last moment of the summit as they agreed to a global action plan for growth and jobs in the final communiqué.

It says that advanced economies commit to adopt policies to build confidence and support growth, while countries with large account surpluses commit to reforms to increase domestic demand, coupled with greater exchange rate flexibility.

However, Rym Ayadi, a senior researcher with the Brussels-based think tank Center for European Policy Studies, said he remained skeptical about the summit’s role in improving the global economic situation.

"There’s no common solution to solve the macroeconomic unbalance without deteriorating the situation of other countries," he said.

G20 leaders also agreed to set up a task force to specialize on youth employment issues and fight cross-border tax evasion, among other guideline consensus towards reforming international monetary system and financial sector as well as promoting agriculture, improving energy markets and avoiding protectionism.

The summit reflected the limits of what can be expected from the G20 in terms of getting the international economy back on track, as observed by Michele Chang, professor of political economy with the Brugge-based College of Europe.

"While cooperation and communication are critical in managing a crisis, when it comes to restarting growth the bulk of the work is done at the national level," she said.

Chang’s view was highly echoed by Donald Brean, professor of finance and economics with the University of Toronto, who labeled this summit’s communiqué as “uncharacteristically brief and remarkably bland.”

"The fragile global recovery requires each nation to do its duty to enhance growth and to counter volatility although differences in nation’s circumstances call for different policy tactics," he said.

A few other observers still tend to look at the bright side of the summit, as Yves Tiberghien, associate professor of political science at the University of British Columbia said, "It will probably boost credibility of global governance with respect to financial markets," said. Enditem

(Oussama El Baroudi contributed to the story. Write to the author: miaoxiaojuan@xinhua.org)

English.news.cn   2011-11-05 08:50:43 FeedbackPrintRSS
by Xinhua writer Miao Xiaojuan

CANNES, France, Nov. 4 (Xinhua)