G20 summit fails to deliver

On 3-4 November the G20 met in Cannes to discuss key issues in the global economy. Despite this presenting the perfect opportunity to discuss the need for a fair and transparent arbitration process for debt, the meeting instead looked only at maintaining the status quo and resulted in a vague statement containing no concrete solutions to the growing problems of global debt.

Jubilee Scotland has joined with other civil society groups to comdemn the inaction of the G20, you can read the press statement below.

 

The G20 summit in Cannes failed to deliver a fair and sustainable solution for debt crises

 

Civil society organiations across the globe expressed their disappointment with the outcome of the G20 summit in Cannes. Once again, world leaders get their reasoning wrong when addressing problems of governmetn debt.

 

Jürgen Kaiser, Coordinator of Jubilee Germany – one of the campaign’s member organizations – said:

“The results of the summit in Cannes mean that the G20 will face the next debt crisis as unprepared as they have faced the last one. Again they are going to loose a critical amount of time over discussions over how to react to sovereign debt crises“.

 

Despite the fact that the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone has brought the global financial system close to a collapse the G20 seems not yet to acknowledge the complete failure of the global system in dealing with sovereign debt crisis in a fair and lasting manner and does nothing beyond applauding European leaders‘ failed (non)solution to the eurozone crisis.

 

We therefore urgently calls on all countries within and outside the G20 to set up a global fair and transparent workout mechanism for government debt. The policy of pushing austerity on countries, whilst bailing private banks from their reckless lending has failed in Europe just as it has before in Latin America and Africa. Instead, a system independent of both creditors and debtors is urgently needed to reduce the debt burden of countries in crisis.

 

International bodies such as the UN conference on the global financial crisis, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) along with leading academics and civil society organisations, including members of the Defuse the Debt Crisis have developed guidelines for such a process, which the international community should urgently take up. Otherwise the world will stumble into the next crisis like it stumbled into that of Mexico 1982, East Asia 1998, Russian 1999, Argentina 2001, Iceland 2009, Greece and Ireland 2010 and many more.“