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The G8 countries are a self-styled informal club of ‘leading industrialized democracies’ which meets annually at the summit and in a separate cycle of meetings during the year at finance minister level. (The pre-meeting caucuses before the gatherings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank each September are particularly important.) It sprang from an Economic Summit convened by President Valéry Giscard d\'Estaing of France at Rambouillet in November 1975 and until recently was an essentially Western grouping which consisted of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States (plus the president of the European Commission); it was known accordingly as the G7. However, the end of the Cold War was followed by the gradual integration of Russia into the group and the meeting held in Britain at Birmingham in May 1998 was the first ‘G8 Summit’. Originally focused only on economic questions, the G8 agenda broadened in the 1980s to include political issues, and an agreed communiqué, drafted beforehand by the sherpas, also became a feature of the annual summits. |
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