Protests, Hot Air, No Results

German SPD Calls For Re-Think of Summit Format

Is the G-8 summit in its current format worth the trouble? A senior member of Germany's Social Democrat Party and former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt don't think so.

German police officers with water cannon confront demonstrators during a demonstration in Rostock, northeastern Germany, on Monday, June 4.

What's the point of the G-8 summit?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hostess of the G-8 summit, has already admitted that the meeting will produce no agreementon one of the biggest topics on the agenda, how to tackle climate change.

Some 100,000 demonstrators are converging on the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm where the summit is being held, amid fears that protests may turn as violent as last Saturday's anti-G8 rally in Rostock.

The three-day summit meeting will create an estimated 30,000 tons of greenhouse gases and costs will surpass the €100 million-mark ($134.8 million).

World leaders who can't stand each other will grit their teeth and shake hands for the cameras. There'll be a watered-down communiqué at the end of it, and then everybody will go home and the world will be just as messed up as before.

Even before the summit starts on Wednesday, Germany's Social Democrats, junior partners in Merkel's governing coalition, are starting to ask whether the Group of Eight format still makes sense.

"The question is whether this form of organization is still up to date," Hubertus Heil, general secretary of the party, told reporters after a meeting of the SPD's leadership in Berlin on Monday.

He said that after the Heiligendamm summit, the G-8 partners should think about whether the meetings in their current format were dominated by theatrics rather than the search for real solutions.

He said government leaders should continue to meet to discuss pressing problems. "But there has to be a sensible relationship between the outcome and the cost. It can't be that the only result of the summit is good TV pictures."

Heil's comments echo criticism from former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, 88, who launched the annual world economic summits in 1975 together with France's then-leader Giscard d'Estaing.

"These days the whole thing is nothing but a big media spectacle," Schmidt told Bild newspaper in an interview published on Monday. "I heard the Americans alone are coming with 1,000 people. The Russians and the Chinese media won't be far behind. That's stupid. Nothing much will come out of it on a personal level. That's really not Frau Merkel's fault as hostess though."

Schmidt said the summits were never intended as a forum for taking big decisions. "Instead we wanted to bring together the most important government leaders of the West to allow them to get to know each other, ask each other questions and get answers in the smallest possible circle. We were able to avert a looming round of global inflation in that way."

cro/Reuters