On this G20 Summit that talks about people, planet, prosperity, these are all the meetings priorities for the G20, I suppose they could have thrown in the words motherhood and apple pie. It was all sound a bit ambitious, doesn’t it?
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In one-hand these meetings need to be like that, they need to be ambitious to set the scene and maybe then, will be followed up by a certain governments, maybe in bilateral ways, maybe by certain companies that they take the advice from what comes out from the G20 communication. You know, I’ve attended the many of those between the meetings that tend to be setting the stage for them, for other people to deliver. So i’m like moderately positive, at least those words are in there let’s just see what comes out to from the discussion, what practical things can be done, because we really don’t have much time for talking, we really need to act now.
You are a veteran of these gatherings but for those of us who are not there’s a big change in the structure here as I understeand it, this is the first time diplomats and development officials are invited to the G20 meeting, what’s the thinking behind that?
It’s like try to make it a little bit more practical, so a little bit of expertise, it’s not just talk about foreign affairs because it’s a cheeky business you need to be nice to everyone, you need to avoid the problem. Why maybe development experts need to really taclke the problem, so it’s just the nature of the diplomacy that’s shy away from highlighting diversity also is big and focuses on things that are in common, which is the good part of the equation. The second part is to find the problem that we need to solve and that’s left for the second group of people so in a way it is a nice idea for a minister, smile and talk about nice things, corporation and the other people and groups trying to solve the problems. Otherwise the meeting just becomes, a meeting where the real issues are not addressed.
Multilateralism is what I keep on, banging on about that’s the catchphrase that this meeting, but it really does need to be more than just a slogan, doesn’t it the reality seemingly is falling, somewhat shorts.
Indeed, because we think mutual lateralism as an end-to-end countries, not 200 countries deal and trade with the other 200 countries. At the end of the day however, we are now unfortunately seeing attendancy to the decoupling, attendancy to west and east, highlighting differcene rather than where they can cooperate, and this is in a way where we have crisis. In a way, i justify, but i don’t like it that everyone tries to do their own business. Countries try to reassure production of certain materials and goods that are deemed to be necessary, they don’t want to rely on external supply. We have seen disruption in the value chain and even industry that we’re thought to not be particularly sensitive like a clothing and face masks and not becoming very sensitive about semi-conductor, so people retrench they get ready in case there is a storm to at least have a stock ready to continue to do business as usual without to rely necessary on other partners and this is not good for the integration and for the multilateralism, because it leads into protectionist into even minimized exchanges, not just of goods, but even people to people, to reason, exchange, science, technology, university. I fear that after limiting the trade of goods, we also move to limiting other issue, other exchange and that will be very very bad.