Andrés Rozental is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, (Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales), a member of CIGI’s International Advisory Board of Governors and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Carla Angulo-Pasel is a research officer at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. 

 

There was considerably more media coverage in Mexico of the Toronto summit than for the previous G20 gatherings. This may have been due to the excitement surrounding the exaggerated organization costs and the protests that took place, which made the summit a more interesting “story.” During the summit, several newspapers focused on the high level of violence during the protests, which led to hundreds of arrests. However, once the summit concluded, the summit was also thoroughly analyzed by several major media outlets. A couple of newspapers sent reporters to cover the events, although, as is usual, limited press access made them rely on releases from President Calderón’s office. 

However, President Calderón did not stay in Toronto for more than 24 hours. The persistent domestic violence over the weekend, the upcoming state elections on July 4, 201, and the assassination of an Institutional Revolutionary Party gubernatorial candidate, Rodolfo Torre Cantu, in the state of Tamaulipas, on June 28, distracted media attention from the summit.

The Role of the G8 in the G20 Era

The majority of the media coverage in Mexico on the summits referred to both the G8 and G20 and their agenda items simultaneously, treating it as one summit rather than two separate and distinct summits. Most of the analysis surrounding the Toronto summit also dealt with the future of the G8 and the fact that the issues the group addressed at its meeting were of less “consequence” to Mexico than those on the G20 agenda, with the exception of climate change, an agenda item for both summits. As Mexico will host the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 16), the next major meeting of the UNFCCC, the media reported that President Calderón’s presentation to the G20 leaders highlighted both the advances made and the challenges remaining for the meeting being held this November in Cancún (La Crónica). 

More specifically, reports claimed that Calderón called on G20 leaders not to be distracted from the climate change challenges because of the global financial crisis: “The difficulties of the global economy should not divert attention away from a problem which will not give the world a second chance: global warming,” he noted (El Universal). His speech appeared to be aimed at the developed nations, which, according to Calderón, must produce stronger, more measurable commitments in order to reduce their emissions. He called on leaders to create concrete policies rather than merely advancing good political will and to establish a new mechanism to facilitate the transfer of sustainable technologies from developed to developing countries.

G20 Conflict or Cooperation

Most of the substantive media coverage dealt with the two main issues at the summit: deficit reduction and banking regulations. On both topics, the Mexican press emphasized the serious divisions between the United States and European countries. The disagreement between the United States — who encouraged more fiscal stimulus — and the Europeans, primarily led by Germany — who preferred deficit cuts, financial consolidation and structural reforms — led the Mexican media to compare the outcome of this summit to previous G20 summits, where there was definitely more unity among the leaders. At the Toronto G20 Summit, leaders publicly declared their differences and the final declaration allowed each country to adopt its own individual policies (Milenio).

The G20 Framework 

Media attention was primarily given to the successful measures Mexico is implementing to achieve a stable economy. Specifically, media coverage centred on the press conference where Secretary of Treasury Ernesto Cordero indicated that Mexico has taken the G20 Framework very seriously by executing several measures to promote economic growth and sustainability. Mexico agreed with the European and Canadian positions of reducing deficits and implementing structural reforms. Still, as an emerging economy, Mexico is especially worried that, without certainty in the global economy and EU  countries not being able to keep “their houses in order,” Mexico and other emerging economies would suffer serious consequences (El Economista). In order to mitigate the potential impact of the economic uncertainty in Europe, Cordero announced that Mexico has accumulated more than US$100 million in international reserves (a record for the country).

Cordero was also quick to point out that the Mexican economy is faring much better than other G20 countries, which are struggling with considerable debt. The Mexican economy is expected to grow between 4 and 5 percent this year. Mexico has also fared well by implementing several structural reforms, such as increasing its infrastructure investment, with the ultimate goal of accelerating this type of investment to approximately 3 to 5 percent of the GDP. Similarly, the country has instituted fiscal changes that have increased public revenue by 3 percent of the GDP and has liquidated public companies that were losing money (El Universal).

G20 Record of Achievement

A reporter from El Universal wrote an opinion piece discussing the G20 as being less elitist and therefore more representative than the G8, since the G20 represents 85 percent of the world’s GDP. Nevertheless, the piece also referenced the results of the summit as more “rhetorical than substantive,” especially given the voluntary commitments in the G20 Toronto Summit Declaration.

It was mentioned several times that the G20 did not tackle other burning global issues in any depth or detail, but, by and large, the coverage was primarily positive. El Universal reported that, in general, Mexico was satisfied by the G20’s final declaration, making sure to emphasize, however, that these agreements should not be detrimental to Mexico’s economy, that countries such as Britain and Germany should seriously analyze the implications of their policies and, lastly, that Mexico wants developed countries to further open their markets to emerging economies.

There was a generous amount of coverage given to the formal announcement in Toronto that the 2012 G20 summit would be hosted by Mexico.