Silvio Berlusconi and Gordon Brown Work on G8 - G20 Coordination
19/02/2009
«Our two countries agree in full where the current financial and economic crisis is concerned. This encourages us to continue shouldering responsibility for the 2 April G20 on the United Kingdom's part, and for next July's G8 on the Italian Government's part. In the course of our meeting today, we addressed the issues on the agenda at the two summits and we found ourselves to be in complete agreement over that too", Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said at the start of a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Rome's Villa Madama.
The two leaders' talks focussed on the financial and economic crisis, and on the answers to that crisis that the G8 and the G20 are going to have come up with. Berlusconi and Brown underscored the need for close coordination between the two forums. «We are going to attempt to prepare a global agreement», Brown explained, adding: «If each continent cooperates with the others and the financial institutions play their part, then we shall have a global result that will make for more rapid recovery». According to the British Prime Minister, it is also going to be necessary both to devise new international monitoring entities capable of beefing up national oversight bodies and, in particular, to come up with measures capable of ensuring that full information on hedge funds is available.
Similar thinking also transpired in the conclusions reached at a recent G7 economy ministers' meeting in Rome, where emphasis was laid on the need to establish new ground rules capable of ensuring maximum market transparency and of preventing further crises, and where a return to protectionistic measures was firmly rejected. Prime Ministers Berlusconi and Brown agreed on the need not to give in to protectionism, which the Italian Prime Minister called "a trap for growth" and which, in Brown's view, "causes trade to dwindle, thus causing people to lose their jobs". Turning to the more concrete measures required to impart a fresh boost to the economy, Berlusconi did not rule out the possibility that, among other issues, the G8 summit in July may also address the topic of the nationalisation of banks.
The two leaders also discussed the issues on the agenda at the forthcoming G8 Summit on the island of La Maddalena, dwelling in particular on Africa and on the struggle against climate change. Berlusconi said: «The G8 must concern itself with aid for the poorest countries on the African continent, constructing infrastructures that are useful for their progress». Turning to safeguards for the environment, the Italian prime minister stressed that, “the search for a major new agreement on the climate must become a priority. And the world's leading countries must commit themselves to this, making the kind of huge sacrifices that the European Union has been making for some time”. Gordon Brown replied by highlighting the importance of the G8 Summit in July in paving the way for the climate conference due to be held in Copenhagen at the end of the year.
The Italian Prime Minister then provided a brief overview of the meetings on the slate at the three-day G8 Summit in July: «The G8 member countries will be meeting on the first day, while on the second day the debate will be extended to a further five major countries of the calibre of South Africa, Brazil, India, China and Egypt, a country that has a crucial role to play in developments in the Middle East. And finally, on the third day, the meeting will be expanded even further to include the African countries. The secretary of the African Union will also be attending the talks».
