Global Economic Policy: G20 and the European Union

The current financial crisis has greatly intensified international political process targeting the revival of the global economy. The Group of Twenty (G20) has taken over the role of a ‘premier’ economic forum in that respect, on the grounds that it brings together globally-important economies and hence their agreement and joint actions would benefit the global economy as a whole. This chapter aims at evaluating the progress in devising a framework for a global economic policy since the Group’s 2008 Washington Summit. In the period of four years, global economic agenda saw changing agenda items and their ranking, widening of its scope, moving of its geographic focus and changes of the group’s itself. Even though the G20 efforts have induced a wide array of coordinated national measures, recent ‘Europeanization’ of its agenda might, in the foreseeable future, encourage a rise in non-compliance by other, economically more vigorous G20 members or actions by countries outside the group, thus jeopardizing the whole idea of global economic coordination and governance.