Jacques Mistral is head of Economic Studies at the Institute Française de Relations Internationales (IFRI) in Paris.

Debriefing of the G20 Pittsburgh meeting in France

It was quite remarkable that the results of the London meeting had been taken very seriously.  Criticising the traditional G7 and pleading for  “global governance” are traditional French positions so that even left-wing websites – like Rue 89 for example – describe the two meetings of the G20 and of NATO as reflecting the emergence of "a new world". There was consequently ample curiosity to decipher this new world. Now, it is more apparent that the media are unlikely to have a "national" view of the results of the G20 meetings, which are sort of usual political business. The President declared himself relatively happy with the results, and will get more next time, and the opposition party sees nothing more than rhetoric. This said, the main arguments can tentatively been summarized as follows:

Economics

The results of the meeting are commonly seen as poor; François Bourguignon, former chief economist of the World Bank, for example, wrote an op-ed entitled “A summit with a limited scope”. Due to President Sarkozy's emphatic insistence to get “something serious done about the bonuses”, this aspect of the conclusions is trumpeted as a French victory. Any complete report will comment on various aspects which are of special interest in France – capital ratios, Basel II, accounting standards, tax heavens and so forth. Some commentators qualify them as promising but the commitments are sufficiently vague that few would qualify the wording of the communiqué as strong. Enthusiasm has vanished; the mood really is one of “wait and see”. The willingness to "moralize" capitalism (another Sarkozy theme in the spring) has mostly gone out of the radar screen. The reference to global imbalances is considered by the most specialised observers as a distinctive – and long waited for – innovation of this meeting.

Politics

The foregoing suggests that the French media have chosen to report the results of the meeting in a way which is less directly connected to the expectations and actions of President Sarkozy (as compared with London where the president’s initiatives were simply qualified as “progresses without precedent"!). The main exception to this summary is the final public appearance by President Obama, Prime Minister Brown and President Sarkozy for their declaration about the Iranian nuclear case: at that moment, it was felt by the media that something great was happening again. The role of the IMF, and the TV presence of its boss, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, also helped to give a French flavour to the meeting. Attention to German positions, which is always of interest in France, was at that time mainly focused on the ongoing elections.  There was little attention paid to common Franco-German positions prepared for this meeting. 

International interests

According to French observers, the conclusions of London were clear cut; the world was entering a new era. Well, Pittsburgh is now seen as a traditional meeting with a lot of national interests. One major newspaper carefully analyzed the strategy and goals of the 9 major players and painted them as having not much in common. The exact role of the US and China, for example, was not as prominent in these reports as was the case after London.  In my previous analysis I went as far as asking: “Could we possibly have witnessed the first G2?” According to the French, Pittsburgh is not a clear step in this direction. To be frank, the direction after Pittsburgh is not evident.

Global governance

The idea of substituting the G20 to the G8 is generally welcome, but the substance of the change remains to be revealed. It is good that national leaders are meeting and speaking regularly in such a difficult economic period, but what else? The low profile of questions related to Africa is always considered with regret but without long-term developments, and American shyness regarding climate change raises sharper and sharper questions. What the leaders do is probably the best they can due to their mandates. But the rules and scope of future meetings remains unclear, and expectations are more muted. In short, London was followed by hope; Pittsburgh produced scepticism.