WORLD> Backgrounder
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WORLD> Backgrounder
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History of the G8
(g8italia2009.it)
Updated: 2009-07-02 19:39 How It All Started In the wake of the economic crisis that broke out in the early seventies, the main industrialised democracies decided -- at the invitation of the French Government -- to hold a top-level meeting providing an opportunity for an informal exchange of views and for talks on the measures that might be adopted to handle the serious economic and financial situation. That first meeting, which was thereafter to take place every year, was held in 1975, in the Château de Rambouillet, just outside Paris. It was attended by the six major industrialised countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and US. From G6 to G8 The initial purpose of the "Group of Six" (G6) was to join forces to address the mid-seventies economic crises, and the repercussions of the oil shock in particular, and the international monetary system reform necessitated by the demise of the Bretton Woods currency exchange system based on the dollar's convertibility into gold. In less than two years, Canada's admission in 1977 turned the G6 into the G7. The European Community was also invited to attend. The Soviet Union was invited for the first time to the forums held in parallel with the London G7 Summit in 1991. The new Russian Federation was subsequently brought gradually into the G7 process, until Russian President Boris Yeltsin made his début at the Naples Summit in 1994, thus launching the format dubbed G7+1. It was the Denver Summit in 1997 that -- at the invitation of the United States and the United Kingdom -- brought Russia in as a member of the G8 in its own right. The first Summit chaired by Russia was held in St. Petersburg in July 2006. |
