G20

G20

G20
The Group of Twenty (G20) is an international organization with 19 individual members, plus the EU and AU. International financial stability, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development are just a few of the topics it seeks to solve.

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Member Countries of the G20 Countries represented through the membership of the European Union Countries represented through the membership of the African Union Countries permanently invited
Formation	26 September 1999 (24 years ago) 2008 heads-of-state/heads-of-goverment summits)
Type	International Organisation
Purpose	Bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy.
Membership	21 members 🇦🇷Argentina 🇦🇺Australia 🇧🇷Brazil 🇨🇦Canada 🇨🇳China 🇨🇵France 🇩🇪Germany 🇮🇳India 🇮🇩Indonesia 🇮🇹Italy 🇯🇵Japan 🇲🇽Mexico 🇰🇷South Korea 🇷🇺Russia 🇸🇦Saudi Arabia 🇿🇦South Africa 🇹🇷Turkey 🇬🇧United Kingdom 🇺🇸United States 🇲🇴African Union 🇪🇺European Union
Chairman (Incumbent)	🇧🇷 Lula da Silva, President of Brazil
Website	g20.org

Most of the world’s greatest economies’ finance ministries make up the G20; this group represents over 80% of GWP, 75% of international trade, [b] two-thirds of the global population, and 60% of the world’s geographical area.

In 1999, in the wake of a series of global economic crises, the G20 came into existence. Since 2008, it has met annually for summits at which the heads of government or state, the ministers of finance and foreign affairs, and other high-ranking officials from each member nation attend, with the European Union itself being represented by the European Commission and the European Central Bank. The summits often include long-term participants from other countries, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations.

The Group of Twenty (G20) had a meeting in 2009 and announced that it would serve as the principal forum for global economic and financial cooperation. Analysts agree that the group has grown in significance over the past decade and that it now wields significant influence around the world. However, it has been criticized for its small size, lack of enforcement authority, and suspected undermining of established international institutions. Protests are a common occurrence at summits, especially from anti-globalization activists.

At the 18th G20 Summit in September 2023, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that the African Union would be admitted as the group’s 21st member.

History

The G20 is the latest in a line of international efforts to coordinate economic policy that started after World War II. These include the “Bretton Woods twins”—the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—and what is now the World Trade Organization.

The G20 was first talked about at the G7 summit in Cologne in June 1999. It was officially set up at the G7 Finance Ministers meeting on September 26, 1999, and its first meeting was held in Berlin on December 15–16, 1999. The first chairman was picked to be Paul Martin, who is the finance minister of Canada. The meeting was hosted by Hans Eichel, who is the finance minister of Germany.

Colin I. Bradford and Johannes F. Linn of the Brookings Institution wrote in 2004 that the group was mostly started by Eichel, who was the chair of the G7 at the time. But Bradford later said that Paul Martin, who was Canada’s finance minister at the time and would later become the country’s prime minister, was “the key architect of the formation of the G20 at the level of finance ministers” and that it was Martin who “proposed that the G20 countries move to summits at the level of leaders.” Canadian academic and news sources have also said that Martin and his American partner, then-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, came up with the idea for the G20. But everyone agrees that Germany and the United States were very important in making their goal come true.

Martin and Summers came up with the idea for the G20 in response to a series of huge debt crises that hit emerging markets in the late 1990s. These crises began with the Mexican peso crisis and continued with the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the Russian financial crisis in 1998. Eventually, these crises reached the United States, most notably with the fall of the famous hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in the fall of 1998. It showed them that the G7, G8, and Bretton Woods systems wouldn’t be able to provide financial stability in a world that was becoming more globalized quickly. So they came up with an idea for a new, bigger, permanent group of major world economies that would give everyone a say and new responsibilities in providing financial stability.

Caio Koch-Weser, who works for Eichel, and Timothy Geithner, who works for Summers, were in charge of deciding who could join the G20. Robert Wade, a political scientist, says that:

“Geithner and Koch-Weser went down the list of countries, saying Canada was in, Portugal was out, South Africa was in, Nigeria and Egypt were out, and so on. They sent their list to the other G7 finance ministries, and invitations to the first meeting were
sent out.”

Early topics

The main goal of the G20 has been to manage the world economy. Each year, the summit has had a different theme. “Building and Sustaining Prosperity” was the theme of the G20 cabinet meeting in 2006. Some of the things that were talked about were how to get “sustained growth” at home, the global energy and resource product markets, reforming the World Bank and IMF, and the effects of changes in the population.

In 2007, the headquarters was in South Africa, and Trevor A. Manuel, the South African Minister of Finance, led the G20 as its chair.

Guido Mantega, who was Brazil’s Minister of Finance in 2008, led the G20 and suggested talking about competition on financial markets, clean energy, economic growth, and the financial aspects of growth and development.

After a meeting of G8 finance ministers on October 11, 2008, US President George W. Bush said that the next G20 meeting would be important for finding answers to the growing economic crisis.

Summits 

Because Russia took over Ukrainian Crimea, it was suggested that Russia not be allowed to attend the meeting. The BRICS foreign ministers then told Bishop that “the G20 belongs to all member states equally, and no one member state can decide on its nature and character by itself.”

In 2016, the G20 put its pledge to the 2030 Agenda, Sustainable Development Goals, into three main themes: promoting strong, sustainable, and balanced growth; protecting the planet from damage; and boosting cooperation with low-income and developing countries. At the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, members decided on an action plan and sent a high-level principles document to member countries to help them carry out the agenda.

The 2019 summit was held in Japan. The 2020 summit was supposed to be in Saudi Arabia, but it was held virtually on November 21–22, 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic while Saudi Arabia was in charge. The 2021 G20 Rome summit took place in Rome, the capital of Italy, on October 30 and 31.

Indonesia led the G20 from December 1, 2021, to November 30, 2022. During its time as president, Indonesia focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and how to solve the problems it brought. The three main goals of Indonesia’s G20 leadership were global health architecture, digital transformations, and sustainable energy transitions.

India has been in charge of the G20 since December 1, 2022. The theme of its chair is “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,” which means “One Earth, One Family, One Future” in Sanskrit. The meeting took place from September 9 to September 10 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. In an interview on August 26, 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was optimistic about how the G20 countries’ agendas would change under India’s presidency. He said that the agenda would move toward a human-centered development approach that aligns with the concerns of the Global South. This would include addressing climate change, restructuring debt through the G20’s Common Framework for Debt, and coming up with a plan to regulate global cryptocurrencies. The G20 got bigger when the African Union joined. It was also the first new member since
1999.

Chair rotation 

All G20 members, except for the European Union and the African Union, are put into one of five groups. All but one group has four members, and the other has three. These groups are used to pick which member country gets to lead the G20 leaders’ meeting that year. Groups are made up of states from the same area, except for Groups 1 and 2. All countries in a group can take over the G20 presidency when it’s their group’s turn. So, the countries in the group need to talk with each other about who should be the next G20 president. Each year, from December 1 to November 30, a different G20 partner country is in charge. This method has been in place since 2010, when Group 5’s South Korea was in charge of the G20. The table below shows how the countries are grouped:

Organization 
The G20 does not have a regular staff or secretariat. The chair of the group is chosen from a different group of countries in a different region every year. The current chair sets up a temporary secretariat that handles the group’s work and plans its meetings for the rest of their term. The meeting took place in Bali, Indonesia, in 2022. India is in charge right now, and the 2023 meeting was held there. The 2024 meeting will be held in Brazil.

Proposed permanent secretariat

In 2010, Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, suggested that the G20 set up a permanent office, like the UN. People mentioned Seoul and Paris as possible places for its headquarters. Brazil and China were in favor of making a committee, but Italy and Japan were against the idea. South Korea offered a “cyber secretariat” as an option. Some people have said that the G20 has been using the OECD as a sort of administration.

Members 

As of 2023, the group has 21 members: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, and the African Union. Spain, the United Nations, the World Bank, and ASEAN are among the guest invitees.

At the leaders’ talks, there are representatives from 19 countries, the African Union, and the European Union. At the ministerial-level meetings, there are representatives from 19 countries, the African Union, and the European Union.

Each year, the G20 also has Spain, the Chair of ASEAN, a representative of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and a country (or sometimes more than one) invited by the presidency, usually from its own area.

In the first table below, you can see a list of the member organizations and their heads, such as their finance ministers and central bank directors. The second table shows important information about each member, such as its population and GDP, as well as its membership in other foreign groups, such as the G7, BRICS, and MIKTA. The numbers for the total GDP are given in millions of US dollars.

The African Union will become a part of the G20 at the 18th meeting, which will be held in India in 2023. This was said by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is in charge of the G20 Summit 2023 right now.

Leaders

Member country data 

In addition to these 21 members, the heads of a number of other foreign organizations and forums are also present at G20 meetings. Some of these people are the managing director and chairman of the International Monetary Fund, the president of the World Bank, the International Monetary and Financial Committee, and the chairman of the Development Assistance Committee.

The G20’s members don’t always represent the 21 largest economies in the world, as the group says:

In a group like the G20, it is especially important to limit and maintain the number of countries involved to make sure that the group works well and stays active. There are no official requirements for joining the G20, and the group has always been made up of the same people. Due to the goals of the G20, it was thought that it was important to include countries and areas that were important to the international financial system as a whole. A lot of other things also played a big role, like making sure there was a good mix of people from different parts of the country.

Role of Asian countries
A study from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2011 said that big Asian economies like China and India would become more important in the future in terms of how the world economy is run. The study said that the rise of emerging market economies signaled a new world order in which the G20 would become the global economic steering committee. [64] The ADB also said that Asian countries had led the world’s comeback from the recession of the late 2000s. It said that the region would play a bigger role on the world stage, helping to shape the G20’s plan for balanced and sustainable growth by boosting intraregional trade and domestic demand.

Invitees 

Usually, invites are sent to several people who are not full members of the G20 but would like to attend the summits. Permanent guests include the government of Spain, the Chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and a representative of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. They are called in their roles as leaders of their organizations and as heads of government in their home states. Also, the leaders of the Financial Stability Board, the International Labour Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, the World Bank Group, and the World Trade Organization are invited and take part in planning for the summit as it relates to their organizations’ policies.

The host country chooses the other guests, which are generally one or two countries from the same area. South Korea, for example, asked Singapore to come. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC), the European Central Bank (ECB), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Global Governance Group (3G), and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are all examples of international groups that have been invited in the past. Before, the Netherlands were in the same position as Spain, and whoever held the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union would also be invited, but only in that role and not as the leader of their own country, like the Czech premiers Mirek Topolánek and Jan Fischer during the 2009 summits.

Permanent guest invitees 

Agenda 

Financial focus

When policymakers from the US, Canada, and Germany came up with the first G20 agenda, it was very focused on the sustainability of sovereign debt and the stability of the world’s financial system. It was also designed to include the biggest developing countries as equal partners. During a meeting in November 2008, the group’s leaders promised to give trillions of dollars to international financial organizations like the World Bank and IMF, mostly to get the global financial system back on track.

Since the beginning, the participants in the G20 meeting have mostly talked about global economic growth, international trade, and the regulation of financial markets.

Growth and sustainability
Almost 75% of all carbon pollution in the world comes from G20 countries. After the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement were passed in 2015, more “issues of global significance” were added to the G20 agenda. These included migration, digitalization, employment, healthcare, the economic empowerment of women, development aid, and stopping climate change.

Nearly 75% of the world’s carbon emissions come from the G20 countries. In 2009, they agreed to stop giving “inefficient subsidies.” Even though they said they wouldn’t, G20 countries gave fossil fuel companies more than $3.3 trillion in subsidies between 2015 and 2021. Several of these states increased their subsidies, including Australia (+48.2%), the US (+36.7%), Indonesia (+26.6%), France (+23.8%), China (+4.1%), Brazil (+3.0%), and Mexico (+2.6%). China makes more than half of the world’s energy from coal by itself.

Interrelated themes

Wolfgang Schauble, the German Federal Minister of Finance, has stressed that the problems facing the G20 countries, whether they are financial or developmental, are all connected and that effective, cross-cutting policy measures are needed. “Globalization has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but there is also a growing rise in frustration in some quarters. Development, [national] security, and migration are all linked.”

G20 Engagement Groups
The G20 Engagement Groups and Pre-Conferences are separate groups that are run by groups from the country that is hosting the G20. They come from a wide range of groups and work together to come up with non-binding policy suggestions that are then sent to the G20 leaders for review.

Indonesia will host the G20 in 2022, and 10 engagement groups have been set up to help independent parties come up with ideas and policy suggestions for G20 leaders.

Under the G20 India Presidency of 2023, Startup20 and a few other groups were set up to get people involved.

Influence and accountability 

Even though the G20 doesn’t have any formal power to implement rules, its important members give it a strong voice in global policy. There are disagreements about the G20’s right to exist, as well as complaints about how it is run and how well its statements work.

Critics question the G20’s openness and accountability. They point out that it doesn’t have a written charter and that its most important meetings are closed to the public. Frances Stewart, an economist, came up with the idea of a United Nations Economic Security Council as an option for the G20 in 2001. Members of such a council would be chosen by the General Assembly based on how important they are to the world economy and how much they want to help the world economy grow.

In the country that is holding the summit, the cost and level of security are often points of contention. Protesters at G20 summits have come from a wide range of backgrounds, including information activists, people who don’t like fractional-reserve banking, and anti-capitalists. In 2010, when the G20 meeting was held in Toronto, there were a lot of protests and riots. This led to the largest number of arrests in Canadian history.

Views on the G20’s exclusivity of membership

Even though the G20 has said that its “economic weight and broad membership give it a high degree of legitimacy and influence over the management of the global economy and financial system,” its legitimacy has been questioned. In 2011, a report from the Danish Institute for International Studies criticized the G20 for being too exclusive. It pointed out that African countries weren’t represented enough and that inviting observers from non-member states was just a “concession at the margins” that didn’t give the organization the legitimacy of being representative. In regards to the problem of membership, US President Barack Obama said that it is hard to make everyone happy: “Everyone wants the smallest group that includes them. So, if they’re the 21st biggest country in the world, they want to be in the G20 and think it’s very unfair that they weren’t invited. Others said in 2011 that the fact that it is exclusive is not an unsolvable problem and suggested ways that it could be more open to everyone.
Norwegian perspective

As the current prime minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Stre, told Der Spiegel in 2010, the G20 is “one of the greatest setbacks since World War II” because 173 states that are all members of the UN are not among the G20. This is in line with Norway’s emphasis on inclusive international processes, the United Nations, and the UN system. This includes Norway, a country with a sizable developed economy and the seventh-largest contributor to UN international development programs that is not a member of the EU and hence has no direct representation in the G20. Norway, like other comparable states, has a negligible or nonexistent say in the group’s affairs. Stre said that the G20 weakens the authority of post-war institutions, including the IMF, the World Bank, and the United Nations.

The members of the G20 have chosen to form this organization. Their make-up is decided by the world’s leading nations and powers. There is still an element of arbitrariness, even if it is more inclusive than the G7 and G8, which only include the world’s eight wealthiest nations. The 19th century, when world leaders convened to redraw international boundaries, is long gone. Everyone agrees that a new Congress in Vienna is unnecessary.

However, in fact, Norway has moderated this approach, and the country has made significant contributions to several G20 work streams over the years, including those focusing on health, energy, and climate. Norway’s current government, led by Erna Solberg, attended the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017.

Spanish position on membership

The Spanish economy is the fourth largest in the European Union, the second largest among Spanish-speaking countries, and the third largest in Iberoamerica, with a nominal GDP ranking of fifteen and a PPP ranking of sixteen. In addition, many Spanish corporations have gone global since the 1990s, making Spain a major investor in economies all over the world. There’s no denying that it has more people than several existing G20 members, such as Argentina or South Africa. As a result, the country is now, according to Henley and Company, a de facto member of the Group of Twenty. Spain, meanwhile, is a permanent observer and has no plans to apply for full membership.

Polish aspirations
Unlike Spain, Poland’s government has frequently sought membership in the Group of Twenty.

Prior to the G20 London summit in 2009, the Polish government expressed interest in joining with Spain and the Netherlands and condemned an “organizational mess” in which a handful of European leaders spoke in the name of the collective EU without legitimate authorization in cases that belonged to the European Commission.

In a meeting with foreign diplomats in 2010, Polish President Lech Kaczyski made the following statement:

The Polish economy ranks 18th in the world, according to our estimates. As a member of the Group of Twenty, my country has a prominent position. Aside from the obvious fact that Poland has the largest economy in the region and is the most populous country to have lived through a particular historical period, this is a fairly straightforward supposition. The events in that narrative represent a political and economic shift.

Tim Ferguson suggested in 2012 that Poland be substituted for Argentina, arguing that the latter’s membership in Europe would be less genuine and the former’s more so because Poland’s economy was on track to take on a leading role in the region. For his part, Wall Street Journal contributor Marcin Sobczyk shared this view. World Bank official Mamta Murthi remarked, “To be in ‘a club,’ what Poland can do is to continue working as if it already is in the club it wants to join.”

A paper detailing Ernst & Young’s recommendations for ideal G20 participants was released in 2014. Poland was selected as a top-performing member after careful examination of trade, institutional, and investment ties.

In Poland, the Law and Justice Party and President Andrzej Duda have made G20 membership a central part of their electoral platform. During a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Baden-Baden in March 2017, Poland was represented for the first time by Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Global Governance Group (3G) response
Singapore’s UN ambassador voiced concern in June 2010 that the G20’s decisions will affect “all countries, big and small,” and argued that influential non-G20 members should be invited to the table for negotiations on financial reform. From there, Singapore took the lead in forming the Global Governance Group (3G), an informal gathering of 30 non-G20 countries (including several microstates and several Third World countries) to more efficiently feed their opinions into the G20 process. Invitations to the G20 summits in South Korea in November 2010 and in subsequent years (Singapore chaired the 3G in 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017) were extended to the country in part because of its leadership role in the 3G.

Foreign Policy critiques

The U.S.-based newspaper Foreign Policy has published articles attacking the G20 for its primary objective of replacing the apparently exclusive G8. This causes one to question the behavior of some G20 members and makes it seem like some countries shouldn’t even be there. Furthermore, the magazine has criticized the G20’s efforts to implement reforms of the world’s financial institutions, calling them failures while the effects of the Great Recession are still being felt today.

Calls for removal of Russia

U.S. President Joe Biden demanded Russia’s expulsion from the alliance in March 2022, after the country invaded Ukraine. Alternately, he advocated for Ukraine’s attendance at the G20 2022 conference despite the country’s lack of membership. The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, also suggested the group “re-evaluate” Russia’s membership. Russia says this is not a big deal because most G20 countries are already economically competing with Russia because of the conflict. It was suggested by China that expelling Russia would be ineffective. Russia and Indonesia announced in November 2022 that Vladimir Putin would not be physically present at the G20 conference but would participate remotely. [105] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke in a video statement during the 2022 summit, referring to the gathering as the “G19” several times to signal his belief that Russia should be expelled from the organization.