Economic summit

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Economic summit is a special meeting during which leaders of The Group of Eight (G-8 countries: France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Japan, the United States, and Russia that are the group of eight highly industrialized countries) discuss current economic conditions and its impact on each leader's prospective country[1].

Origins of Economic Summit

In the middle 1970s following global issues with exchange rates of the most industrialized countries, French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing hosted informal gathering of the leaders of: West Germany, Italy, France, United States, Japan and The United Kingdom. The aim of the meeting was to discuss current exchange rate system and possibilities to make it more effective. Discussions in this topic continued between the United States and France representatives, who agreed to flexible exchange rate system that included coordinated interventions in the external exchange markets whenever such intervention was required in order to ensure stability of exchange rates. During the summit, President Giscard d’Estaing announced the crunch and received immediate approval for it from the other leaders.

Six months following the first economic summit, the United States President Gerald Ford made a decision to host economic summit on his own. Moreover, President decided to invite Canada to participate in the meeting. Consequently, President Ford institutionalized the summits. Since then they are held each year during the summer and they are known as Economic Summit.

In 1997, United States President, William Clinton who hosted the economic summit at that time, invited Russian President Boris Yeltsin to participate in the summit for the whole duration of it, even though he was excused from all of the economic meetings. In 1998, during the summit hosted by the United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Yeltsin was invited to attend all the summit meetings. Consequently, the participating nations have been expanded to eight, or The Group of Eight (G8).

In 2014, member countries of the G7 decided to exclude Russia from the summit following its annexation of Crimea. Therefore, annual economic summit participation returned to the G7[2].

List of summits

No. of summit Year Place of the summit
The Group of Six
1 1975 Château de Rambouillet
The Group of Seven
2 1976 San Juan
3 1977 London
4 1978 Bonn
5 1979 Tokyo
6 1980 Venice
7 1981 Montebello
8 1982 Versailles
9 1983 Williamsburg
10 1984 London
11 1985 Bonn
12 1986 Tokyo
13 1987 Venice
14 1988 Toronto
15 1989 Grande Arche
16 1990 Houston
17 1991 London
18 1992 Munich
19 1993 Tokyo
20 1994 Naples
21 1995 Halifax
22 1996 Lyon
The Group of Eight
23 1997 Denver
24 1998 Birmingham
25 1999 Cologne[3]
26 2000 Okinawa
27 2001 Genoa
28 2002 Kananaskis
29 2003 Évian-les-Bains
30 2004 Sea Island
31 2005 Gleneagles
32 2006 Saint Petersburg
33 2007 Heiligendamm
34 2008 Tōyako
35 2009 L'Aquila, Abruzzo
36 2010 Huntsville
37 2011 Deauville
38 2012 Camp David, Maryland
39 2013 Lough Erne in County Fermanagh
The Group of Seven
40 2014 Brussels
41 2015 Schloss Elmau, Bavaria
42 2016 Shima, Mie Prefecture
43 2017 Taormina, Sicily
44 2018 La Malbaie, Quebec[4]

European Economic Summit

Economic Summit - established 2014 as ‘European Economic Summit’. The aim of the economic summit is to promote new models on economy and finance based on thought and faith, Christian tradition and finally transformational businesses that generate human, natural, financial and social capital as new models for sustainable economies and poverty alleviation. Following the first meeting in 2014 Economics of Mutuality concept has played an important role during Economic Summit Meetings. In business context mutuality stands for sharing of the benefits that doing business between multiple stakeholders can bring: the environment, the community and people.

Economics of Mutuality Origins (EoM)

The concept is based on the Jubilee principle (Bible, Lev. 25). Through the ages, almost every economic system has been based on:

  1. the land as it provides raw materials and the resources from which goods can be created,
  2. the people as they are the ones that can transform these resources into services and goods that can be sold,
  3. the financial capital (money) which provides liquidity.

Jubilee concept as well as EoM advocate remunerating communities, people, capital and land in management practice in a broad based and integrated fashion[5].

The EoM leverages mutuality principle in business as a driving force for value creation. The model promotes profitable, sustainable business and benefits in the form of environmental, human as well as social well-being. Moreover, it encourages the concentration of various forms of capital in multiple stakeholders’ hands leveraging the power of capitalism. Therefore, the EoM seems to have the potential to adapt to the disruptive business environment better than the Financial Capitalism model exposed and promoted by Milton Friedman. It focuses only on profit as the only one form of the capital simultaneously excluding of all the others[6].

Footnotes

  1. Economic Summit, 2019
  2. Daniels, J.P,van Hoose, D.D., 2017
  3. Documents of Summit Meetings in the Past, 2019
  4. Economic Summit, 2014
  5. White, D.L., 2009
  6. Economic Summit Europe 2018, 2019


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References

Author: Klaudia Słota