FT: Germany plans to shake up G8 agenda

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e3e35a3c-1da2-11db-bf06-0000779e2340.html

Germany plans to shake up G8 agenda

By Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and Mark Schieritz in furt

Published: July 27 2006 22:08 | Last updated: July 27 2006 22:08

Germany is to lead the Group of Eight leading industrial nations away from its focus on development issues when it assumes the rotating presidency next year.

Instead, Merkel wants next year’s G8 summit to focus more tightly on global economic matters, not least the issue of global imbalances.

The German Chancellor believes the G8’s agenda has become too broad. In recent years its attention has ranged over third world poverty, climate change and pandemics.

German officials say Ms Merkel aims to “get back to the roots” of the economic summits of the 1970s and return the group to its focus on the global economy.

The decision reflects rising concern among European policymakers over the failure to address deepening global imbalances – the diverging current account positions of the world’s main economic regions.

The fears have grown since the collapse of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha round of trade talks this week, and are felt acutely in Berlin because of Germany’s reliance on exports.

The German government is soon to finalise the agenda of the summit, which is scheduled for June 6-8 next year in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm. In addition to global imbalances, the meeting’s other central topics are likely to be intellectual property protection and energy.

The first meeting of leading industrial nations, convened in 1975 by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the French president, and Helmut Schmidt, the German chancellor, in Rambouillet, came in the wake of the 1973 oil shock.

In recent years, however, the G8’s original economic focus has become obscured, with discussions on topics ranging from foreign policy to development, climate change and pandemics. The time devoted to discussing the global economy has dwindled.

Although this month’s G8 summit in St sburg, under Russia’s chairmanship, issued a statement on trade, the meeting was the first not to publish a separate communiqué addressing the world economy.

Ms Merkel’s decision to tighten the focus is one reason for the chancellor’s rejection this month of the proposal, supported by the UK, to extend its membership to such countries as China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico.

The decision partly draws on experience of European Union summits, where concentrated discussions on pre-arranged topics have become all but impossible as the EU’s membership has expanded to 25 nations.

By contrast, the group of G7 finance ministers will invite China to regularly join its annual meetings. So far, China has been invited to the meetings only on an irregular basis.

Germany will be chairing the G8 for the fifth time. Berlin will also take over the six-month presidency of the EU in January.

Glos, who as economics minister will chair three EU ministerial councils under the country’s presidency, told the FT last week that economic policy co-ordination in the eurozone was “deeply unsatisfactory”.

Additional reporting by Ralph Atkins in furt