Parliamentary Speakers Summit in the Context of the G-20

Fernando Iglesias
President of the WFM, Director of the Spinelli Chair in Buenos Aires, member of the Argentinian Parliament.

Between 2010 and 2013, four parliamentary speakers’ summits have taken place within the framework of G-20 under the name of “Consultations”. The first meeting has been held in Ottawa, Canada, in September 2010; the second in Seoul, Republic of Korea, in May 2011; the third in Riad, Saudi Arabia, in February 2012; the fourth in Mexico City, in April 2013. By 2018, Argentina took up again the parliamentary speaker’s summit and, for the first time, the P20 was organized by a National Congress (Argentina), the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU) and the OECD.

Unlike the 7 engagement groups of the G-20, namely: Business 20 (B20), Labour 20 (L20), Science (S20), Youth (Y20), Women 20 (W20), Civil 20 (C20) and Think 20 (T20), which are adopted by the member states of the G-20, the parliamentary speakers of the G-20 agreed that, being the P20 the expression of an independent parliamentary power, the formal establishment of the P20 does not need any government’s authorization.

In 2018, the addressed debate in Argentina was: Building consensus for a sustainable and fair development. Its final joint agreement stated: “We made a commitment to work together to find and implement lasting solutions to the key challenges of our ever-changing world. These include the future of work, financing for development, the fight against corruption, the empowerment of women and youth, education for the new era of technology and innovation, and the renewed commitment to multilateralism”.

Another meaningful statement was: “We are convinced that, in view of the increasing interdependence of our societies and the growing threats to democracy, the current system of global governance needs to be strengthened so that it better reflects the perspectives and interests of all people everywhere, including those of vulnerable groups. We are strongly committed to promoting a rules-based global order with multilateralism as its key principle”, and “Our Parliamentary Speakers’ Summit of G20 member and guest countries is founded on the paradigm of ‘global challenges, global solutions’ and, to this aim, we reiterate the need to increase dialogue and cooperation among our States, governments, and parliaments”.

In the context of this P20 Summit, the side-event “Towards the creation of a Latin American and Caribbean Criminal Court against Transnational Organized Crime (COPLA)” has taken place. Many parliamentarians and ambassadors of the region discussed the feasible institutional solutions to the rise of transnational crime. The outcome document was the Buenos Aires Declaration, which proposed a mechanism for institutionalizing the COPLA and was signed by more than 20 officers among parliamentarians and ambassadors from Argentina, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela.

After the end of the P20, by following a recommendation of MP Fernando Iglesias, the speaker of the Argentine Chamber, Dr Monzó, sent an official letter to his Japanese counterpart. He insisted on the value of the experience, recommended to repeat it at the coming Osaka P20 Summit, suggested that it might work around global core topics (climate change, international terrorism, migrations flows, disruptive technologies, financial market regulation and transnational organized crime), proposed that the discussion of these topics should be developed within committees and that either resolutions or recommendations were voted, hence should be added to the G20 agenda.

Recently, the Japanese Chamber’s speaker communicated to Mr Monzó that, indeed, a new edition of the P20 will be organized during the next G-20 Osaka summit and accepted most of the recommendations he received. Hopefully, this will be a first step towards a parliamentary global discussion as a permanent part of the political debate previous to the P20.