Draft G8 Declaration for Heiligendamm leaked: an agenda against the South

A first internal draft of a declaration for the coming G8 summit has been leaked. The Washington-based NGO Oil Change International published the 21-page text on its website. The document entitled Growth and Responsibility in the Global Economy obviously comprises the economic policy part of the planned summit document. There is nothing on the implementation of promises made at the G8 summit at Gleneagles and the Africa policy announced as the second focus of the German G8 agenda. The individual chapters deal with the issues of global imbalance, international investment, innovation protection, climate change and energy efficiency as well as raw materials security and transparency.

Above all the chapters on “investment freedom, investment environment and social responsibility” and “promoting innovation—protecting innovation” show that the German government intends to use the summit to impose an anti-South agenda. Thus it wants to mobilise against the emerging economies for their alleged “new investment protectionism” and further strengthen patent law and intellectual property instruments against product piracy. However, both the political control of foreign investment (which can include unequal treatment) and the imitation of products and production processes were always first order development factors.