G20 Foundation Research G20 Russia Summit 2013 | Seite 11

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[Evaluation of the G20 Leaders Summit in St Petersburg on September 5-6]
III.
The impact of the Outreach groups
Civil 20: Like the BUSINESS 20, the CIVIL 20 Outreach group covered a wide range
of ideas similar to the G20 agenda. Key topics included inclusive growth, financial
architecture, employment, energy and food security. CIVIL 20’s impact was
ambivalent. On the one hand, CIVIL 20 recommendations on growth were nearly
identically integrated in the Leaders Declaration. On the other hand, other CIVIL 20
key topics like inclusiveness or energy and environment did only play a minor role in
the Leaders Declaration. One reason might be that a topic like enabling growth is
less controversial than topics like climate change or inclusiveness and makes it
easier to find an agreement. For the next summits, CIVIL 20 could improve its impact
by formulating recommendations on controversial topics more carefully to establish
them as basis for a general agreement.
Business 20: Preceding the 2013 G20 Leader’s Summit, BUSINESS 20 presented an
extensive plan of recommendations and proposals. Covering a wide range of topics,
BUSINESS 20 proposed an agenda that was very similar to the actual summit
agenda. While this can be counted as a success, the BUSINESS 20
recommendations and their impact suffered as the summit agenda from a strong
focus on Syria and only vague formulations with respect to many fields. Very
concrete BUSINESS 20 proposals such as an improved classification of SMEs, their
preferential treatment or a new boost for innovation and development did not find
their way into corresponding declarations. Most notably, the summit success in the
area of base erosion and tax avoidance was not in the interest of BUSINESS 20.
Labour 20: The main focus of the LABOUR 20 Outreach group was covering growth
through jobs, an inclusive labor market and solutions dealing with youth
unemployment. LABOUR 20’s impact was especially noticeable regarding the topic
youth unemployment, where central parts of their recommendations found their way
into the final declaration. One reason for LABOUR 20’s strong impact was their
coordination with other Outreach groups such as the BUSINESS 20.
Youth 20: YOUTH 20’s role in the G20 process can be best described when
examining the issue of youth unemployment. Unfortunately YOUTH 20’s impact was