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FT REPORT - THE FUTURE OF EUROPE: Merkel keeps focus broad
Financial Times
Published: Jun 04, 2007


This is a very big week for the government of Angela Merkel, with the international spotlight about to fall on a sparklingly white luxury hotel perched on Germany's Baltic coast. There, in the village of Heiligendamm, the German chancellor is Wednesday onwards to host this year's G8 summit of the leading industrial nations plus Russia.

If nothing else, the summit, running under the slogan Growth and Responsibility, is likely to mark another knot in the string of achievements by Ms Merkel on the international stage, as she gently nudges the other seven leaders to agree a weighty communiqué.

Yet, somewhat unusually for such summits these days, the outcomes are far from certain, for two reasons. First, the agenda the Germans have chosen is in some respects ambitious. On two issues - climate change and Africa - the likely results remain hazy, and may not become clear until the leaders themselves meet on the blustery north-east coast.

Second, for the first time in several years, there is a serious danger that the summit could be overshadowed by violence involving leftist militants and other anti-globalisation protesters.

Street battles at G8 events involving police and anti-capitalism protesters have largely subsided since the summit in Genoa in 2001 where a protester was killed. Yet the mood in Germany has been tense ahead of the Heiligendamm event. Militant groups have mounted dozens of attacks in recent months on government property and businesses they see as linked to the G8.

As a response, in moves that increased the political temperature even further, police in early May launched multiple raids on militant groups, with prosecutors also declaring several of them as alleged terrorist cells.

Against this background it has been the task of Bernd Pfaffenbach, Ms Merkel's unflappable special G8 envoy, to keep the government's G8 show on the road.

He is upbeat about what the summit will achieve. A year ago, as Germany's G8 agenda was taking shape, Berlin was determined to shift the summit focus at least part of the way back to its origins, namely as an informal fireside chat dealing almost exclusively with international economic topics.

Yet external pressure, and a keenness on Ms Merkel's part to make a mark with the summit, led to a broadening of the agenda. This change has now also touched the economic sphere, with Mr Pfaffenbach using a recent briefing to dismiss the idea that the summit is an elitist event.

He characterised the event as not being about a meeting of a "club of rich nations", but a gathering about managing "the distribution of wealth in the world".

To this end, the leaders are expected to reinforce the case for the completion of the Doha trade round, for free flows of capital and an end to investment protectionism in both developed and developing countries, and stronger protection of intellectual property rights around the world.

Business associations from the G8 countries last month tabled summit demands that largely overlapped with this to-do list.

To help the G8's wealth-management task run smoothly, Germany has invited no fewer than 10 other government leaders to the event, including five from powerful emerging economies - China, India, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico.

As Mr Pfaffenbach admits, these countries have "an important influence" on whether G8 can achieve its goals - for instance on intellectual property rights and investment protectionism.

They also play a vital role on climate change, which is probably the most controversial agenda item.

Ms Merkel hopes that the summit will achieve something where many other international gatherings have failed - to persuade the US to inch towards acknowledging that specific limits on greenhouse gas emissions are needed and that a post-Kyoto agreement in 2012 needs Washington's signature.

The US has shown little sign of changing its stance that technology, not emissions limits, is the answer to climate change. Germany hopes that having other key players such as India and China at the table will make a difference.

The other five leaders in Heiligendamm are from Africa - from Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal and Ghana -- and their presence goes to the heart of the summit's other big unknown - whether the G8 will launch a renewed boost to development aid and other support for Africa, following pledges at the Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005.

The leaders who met at the Scottish golf resort said they would collectively, by 2010, double aid to Africa, and lift overall aid by $50bn. Campaign groups, using official data, complain that the group is already falling short on its promises.

Officials close to Ms Merkel have hinted that she will use the summit to announce €2-3bn in extra aid over the next four years, but it is unclear whether other leaders will make similar commitments.

Yet as the big event approaches, locals living near the conference hotel are more preoccupied with the threats of violence than excited by new G8 promises. To dampen the worries, authorities have built a 12km fence around the conference site to keep protesters out, and banned demonstrations in an even larger zone.

But even the police admit that this week's events are difficult to predict. So with the draft communiqué, the fence and that protesters' anti-G8 plans in place, everyone, including Ms Merkel, will now simply have to wait to see what the world will remember of the village of Heiligendamm.