G20 Foundation Research G20 Russia Summit 2013 | Page 13
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[Evaluation of the G20 Leaders Summit in St Petersburg on September 5-6]
IV.
Comments
G20 summit and Syria
Undoubtedly, the Syria conflict dominated people’s view on the G20 Summit and
G20 reporting, although Syria and other daily political topics were not on the original
agenda.
In saying that, we believe that the G20’s involvement would have been a chance to
point out its role as a forum more legitimate than the G8 and more effective than the
United Nations Security Council for solving long-term and short term problems of the
global community, instead of focusing on the G20 summit solely as an infrastructure
for leaders to discuss current problems and to distinguish oneself for domestic policy
reasons.
G20 as platform for daily politics
G20’s involvement in the Syria conflict brings also the chance for G20 to move from
its role as agenda-setter for long-term questions like solid public finances or
fostering economic growth to a forum where ‘daily politics’ is discussed, too. This is
especially important as the St. Petersburg Summit has been the first G20 Summit
without an acute economic or financial crisis at hand. But given the experience of the
past summits, it might be useful to allocate a specific time slot exclusively for ‘daily
politics’. Therefore, involvement as long term agenda setter on the one hand and
forum for daily politics on the other hand is a great opportunity for G20 to position
itself as the key platform for solving global problems. However, the general problem
of ‘agenda creep’ keeps persisting in this environment
Key achievements
Despite dominance of Syria Conflict and further challenges, interesting and credible
commitments in the areas of Tax Evasion, Unemployment and Financial Regulation
have been made. On the other side, there were not many results in other, more
controversial topics like growth or public debt. One reason might be that St.
Petersburg was the first G20 summit without an acute economic or financial crisis at