'Gated development of globalisation should be on G7 agenda' - Sant

The next G7 agenda should include a gated development of globalisation as one of its targets, said MEP Alfred Sant.

MEP Alfred Sant told the European Parliament that globalisation needs to be managed and not be allowed to happen all by itself, as though it were a force of nature. 

"This should be an item on the G7’s agenda’ said Sant, while the EP was discussing a Commission statement on the Preparation of the G7 Summit. The G7 convenes for its 41st summit in Bavaria Germany between 7-9 June.

The group will meet for the second successive year without Russia, whose membership of the G8 was suspended following its annexation of Crimea. The agenda includes issues of global interest, among them development and environmental protection.

Sant said that as globalisation accelerates, the widening of economic divergences between regions in some of the large trading blocs is being overlooked. 

Meanwhile, the financial system remains predominant over all other economic sectors, because it serves to run and monitor globalisation. It is allocated resources and rewards proportionately far above its contribution to real value added. Wealth and decision making influence are again concentrated within a very narrow band of individuals and institutions.

Sant said that global and regional outcomes are assessed according to macro financial benchmarks that do not capture the growing divergences or even minimize their importance. Yet such divergences are provoking interregional, interethnic and intergenerational injustices.

Economically, they are root causes for the stagnation that undermines the growth potential of regions in the developed and developing worlds. All these tendencies are already contributing to destabilisation. They might not appear to offer agenda material for meetings of leaders from the world’s largest economies. So, they have been taken over by extremist and so-called populist forces, said Sant.