The ‘Sunshine Summit’

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Well you could almost hear the collective community sigh of relief in Korea as the G20 Leaders summit drew to an end.  President Lee  Myung-bak drew the curtain down on the Seoul summit and declared that  “for now, in conclusion, (the world) is out of the so-called currency war.”

Addressing his final remarks to the “citizens of Korea” but also “the citizens of the world”, President Lee painted an optimistic picture of the summit at its conclusion.  And on reflection he is probably right.  There was progress on the framework for global imbalances and the exchange rate policies.  There was agreement that the G20 countries “move toward more market-determined exchange rate systems,” and that the G20 would reduce excessive imbalances both surplus and deficit.  The G20 agreed that they would assess persistently large imbalances against indicative guidelines.

Now having constructed the framework the details need to be filled in here. The indicative guidelines have not been determined and in fact the G20 leaders tasked the Framework Working Group (FWG), with the technical support of the IMF and other international organizations, to develop the guidelines.  Later French President Sarkozy at his briefing indicated that the FWG would meet in Beijing in the spring.  Finally, the Declaration indicated that the guidelines would be initiated and undertaken under the French.

Many will conclude that the failure to provide a clear measure – reference the earlier discussion of 4 percent of current account surpluses or deficits – or to describe the range of indicators that would constitute the indicative guidelines is an evident fudging by the leaders of the effort to bring about rebalancing and a more stable financial and economic system.  But this is – dare I say – a work in progress – and collective progress was achieved.

Moreover, President Lee could take satisfaction from the Leaders Declaration that included growth-oriented development and financial safety net initiatives both new initiatives proposed by Korea.  In addition many of the earlier commitments began to reach successful resolution including IMF reforms as well as financial regulatory reform most especially Basel III.

For Koreans it was not unreasonable to regard this indeed as the ‘Sunshine Summit’.

This entry was posted in Global Governance for G20/G8 by Alan Alexandroff. Bookmark the permalink.

About Alan Alexandroff

Alan is the Director of the Global Summitry Project and teaches at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Alan focuses much of his attention on difficult global order issues including the appearance and consequences of the multilateral environment and the many global summits, especially the Informals such as the G7 and G20.

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