The Group of Twenty (G20) is an international forum dedicated to global financial and economic collaboration.
Comprised of the EU and 19 other countries, the G20 nations constitute 67% of the global population, 75% of world trade, and 80% of the gross world product (GWP).
While its impact on national and global reform is high, it is not an official multinational organisation.
Rather, it represents cooperation between international leaders and bodies whose goal is to establish financial and economic stability. As such, heads of governments and states, finance ministers, and central banks also work towards crisis control.
Safeguarding against financial calamities similar to that of 2008 is also a central theme to the annual meeting of its members.
Since the forum doesn’t have a permanent secretariat, a yearly rotation ensures that a different participating nation assumes the role of host.
In that regard, Germany acquired the current 2017 presidency for the G20 on December 1, 2016. Parts of the G20 presidential responsibilities include preparing and orchestrating over 60 ministerial meetings each year.
The G20 tackles issues surrounding global economic growth, regulation, and trade. It also ensures that tax payers don’t have to bail out financial bodies. In that vein, supervision is of utmost importance in regards to eradicating threats such as shadow banking.
Thus, a fundamental objective is that no products or entities within the financial market go unsupervised.
The official G20 website describes the Group of Twenty as “the premier forum for international economic cooperation and increasingly the central forum for all questions of global governance. It responds to the insight that national action alone falls short in an increasingly networked world.”
Additionally, the G20 focuses on policies such as employment, climate change, digital technology, counter-terrorism, and the refugee crisis. The extensive calendar of ministerial meetings ensures that these topics are suitably studied and discussed.
The 19 countries in the G20 are as follows (not including the EU):
This year’s Group of 20 summit will take place on the 7-8 of July, and will be the twelfth proceeding. Its next upcoming event will be the first Multistakeholder Conference on Digital Economy on April 6.