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Is the G-8 Obsolete?

Merkel Favors G-20 to Tackle World's Problems

Italy is preparing to host the G-8 summit next week, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that the G-20 is her preferred forum for tackling global problems. Germany's leading anti-globalization group Attac agrees. The group is planning to eschew Italy and instead focus its protest energy on the bigger G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

It's not often that Germany's chancellor and its main anti-globalization movement agree. But when it comes to the relevance of the G-8 gathering of the world's top eight industrialized nations, Angela Merkel and protest group Attac seem to be united in their lack of esteem for that particular forum.

With a week to go before the next G-8 meeting in the Italian city of L'Aquila, Merkel told the German parliament in Berlin on Thursday that the forum was no longer sufficient to deal with the challenges ahead. "We are seeing that the world is growing together and that the problems that we face cannot be solved by the industrialized countries alone," she said.

Merkel now favors the G-20, a wider group of nations, including the fast-growing nations like China, Brazil and India. "I think the G-20 should be the format that, like an overarching roof, determines the future," she said.

The German leader envisages the G-8 being a forum for preliminary discussions with the "relevant global decisions being made in a bigger format."

Struggling to Keep the G-8 Relevant

The G-8 meeting, which takes place from July 8-10, is sandwiched between G-20 gatherings in London in April and in the US city of Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 and 25. That broader group has already started to grapple with formulating a regulatory response to the global financial crisis and recession.

The Italian government has made an attempt to keep the G-8 relevant, by inviting 40 nations and international organizations to the meeting. And for the first time the G-8 will issue a statement with the G-5 group of emerging nations -- China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa -- plus Egypt.

The summit's agenda will include tackling the global financial crisis, Iran and climate change. It kicks off with talks among the eight leaders about whether the crisis is ending and whether stimulus packages have worked.

Merkel in particular is adamant that regulatory structures need to be introduced to prevent a repeat of the crisis. She told the parliament on Thursday that there could be no return to "business as usual" just because there are signs the crisis is easing. On Wednesday her Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück accused Great Britain of hindering efforts to reform the financial global markets, a claim London quickly refuted.

Italy is hoping to avoid the scenes of violence that accompanied its last experience of hosting the G-8 when police and protesters clashed in Genoa in 2001, culminating with the fatal police shooting of 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani.

G-8 Is 'Meaningless'

The G-8 summit is taking place in L'Aquila, which was shook by a terrible earthquake which killed over 300 people earlier this year. In keeping with the more austere times, the leaders will be put up in a police barracks rather than a luxurious hotel.

The authorities are hoping that the protestors will avoid L'Aquila out of respect for the thousands of people still living in temporary shelter there. Nevertheless, there are plans for some protests -- with trade unions, environmentalists and other left-wing groups in Italy calling for a demonstration on July 10.

However, it looks unlikely that thousands of anti-globalization activists will be flocking to Italy next week. Attac, the group that organized many of the protests against the German G-8 meeting at the Baltic Sea coast of Heiligendamm in 2007 are not planning any big demonstrations for next week. Instead they are concentrating their efforts on the upcoming G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

Jutta Sunderman, a member of Attac's coordinating committee told the AFP news agency on Thursday that the G-8 had lost its symbolism and was now far "less relevant." Another leading Attac activist Pedram Shahyar told the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung that the global financial crisis has made the G-8 "meaningless." He even thinks this year's summit will be the last one ever.