Did you know that some time ago the G20 in Hamburg happened? Well, if you didn’t, here’s a good way to catch up with what happened during the meeting between the 20 biggest economic powers of the world.
Born in 1999 as an international forum for the governments and the central bank governor to discuss international finance policies, it replaced the G8 as the main economic council of the wealthy nations in 2009 after the heads of the 20 nations met there, as they regularly did afterward, in 2008. The nation involved in this meeting are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and the European Union plus, every year, there are guest representatives of other nations. Each year the meeting is hosted in a different country and, as we stated in the beginning, this year was Germany’s turn.
While the main focus of this meetings is economy, various topics of international relevance, like migration, the climate change and terrorism, are discussed and while some journalists labeled this as the most uninfluential G20 so far, the outcomes regarding those “side topics” were the most interesting and probably, in the long run, the most relevant.
But the real star of this meeting was one and one only. The President of the United States of America Donald J. Trump.
The first meeting for Trump.
As it was predictable, the main focus of attention for most of the media was the new president of United States Donald Trump. Putting aside the fact that it was the first G20 for the most peculiar president of the, till now, most influential nation, what captured the attention of the press was the most waited meeting between President Trump and President Putin. While the shadows of the suspects about the involvement of the Russian government in the american presidential election in favor of Trump, the two leaders achieved important agreements over a truce in Siria and, ironically if we think at the russiagate, a joint effort to enhance cyber security. In the end we can say that the meeting between the two most iconic archenemies in history (USA and Russia) went quite smoothly. So much so that a second “informal” private meeting occurred between the two presidents at the end of a dinner, meeting that left everyone wondering what the hell did they say to each others.
A game of influences
In the same way Trump represented the only real news regarding most of the topic tackled during the meeting. His willingness to exit the paris agreement and protectionistic tendencies in the economic field where indeed the only dissonant voice in a general climate of accordance.
If on one side with this kind of approach president Trump doesn’t fall too far from what he claimed to achieve during his campaign, the downside is a loss of influence and credibility to the eyes of the international politics and, more than everything, to the eyes of the old continent. Influence and credibility that are ready to be cashed, again, by Russia and China who, on the other hand showed a great deal of support and approval about the road traced by this meeting both in the economical and ecological fields.
Terrorism and Migration
In the end the topics of terrorism and migration were also subject of discussion during this meeting.About the first, little has to be reported, since the outcome of the discussion was a general willingness to strenghten the effort against terrorism. More interesting, while at the same time disappointing, was the discussion about migration.
Infact, while the migration crisis on the mediterranean area get worst by the minute, the Italian proposal of opening more european ports to the flux of migrants was promptly refused by the european union itself who claimed that the only solution to the problem is to stop the flux from where it starts, in north africa. For this reason during the g20 EU called all the states to be more strict on controls about illegal migrations. A mild response indeed… don’t you think?
