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The G20 and the European Union
If you build the present in the image of the past you will miss out entirely on challenges of the future. The first meeting of the G20 leaders originally set up as the finance ministers’ forum at the initiative of the G8 leaders2 more than a decade ago in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis, launched a new phase of development both of the international financial architecture and the global governance system. The EU participation in the G20 has been full scale from its birth, unlike gradual inclusion of the EU into the G7 processes. The reasons are clear. The internal factor defining the EU influence in the G20 was the beginning of the third stage of EMU and adoption of the single currency. Success of the euro as the single and a second reserve currency, its establishment as a factor of the global economic and monetary system, defined the EU role in the G20.