Nishant Bhaiji
NEW DELHI: Spain, the Permanent Guest at G20, has the 14th largest GDP in the world and 5th largest in Europe. In G20, it is way ahead of South Africa, which is at 32 and fares better than some of the other G20 members like Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Argentina. Back in 2007, a year before the 2008 global meltdown and the first G20 Summit, Spain was the 8th largest economy in the world.
And, yet, it has failed to find a place in the grouping of members that “represent more than 80 per cent of world GDP, 75 per cent of international trade and 60 per cent of the world population.” Ever since G20 has evolved into a yearly summit involving the Heads of State and Government, Spain has been a ‘Permanent Guest’.
G20 does represent 80 per cent of the world’s GDP, as proclaimed in its website, but it does not necessarily represent top 20 world economies. And like Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland and Poland also don’t find a place in the list. Argentina and South Africa do.
Hence, G20 is essentially G7 i.e. United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the other 12 politically, regionally and economic powerful countries along with the European Union. In 2008, Spain found itself in an awkward situation by being the only nation in the top 10 economies that was not invited to an emergency meeting in Washington DC in the backdrop of the economic meltdown.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the then prime minister of Spain, lobbied hard and through all the diplomatic maneuvering was successful in getting the backing of the UK, France, EU, Austria in Europe along with Mexico and Brazil to be invited for the meeting.
Back then, when the world was reeling under financial crisis, Spain’s economy was relatively healthy. The Financial Times rated the Bank of Spain as the best situated financial regulator to weather the 2008 financial crisis. According to the newspaper, stricter regulation and conservative lending practices among the country’s banks, made sure that Spain’s financial sector was not as highly leveraged as that of the other countries.
Zapatero argued that his country should be amongst the ones who lead the world out of the financial crisis and make sure that it does not repeat. “It (Spain) has an experience which is of great interest for the reform of the global financial system,” he said.
There was speculation in the Madrid political circles that Zapatero’s 2004 withdrawal of troops from Iraq was one of the reasons for US President Bush not extending an invitation to Spain for the G20 meeting. However, newspapers reported that the then US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had told Spanish Foreign Minister Angel Morations that all this was mere speculation. The real reason, according to Rice, was that the US had to ensure geographic diversity. Moreover, it had to draw a line somewhere or there would have been no end to membership requests, said the reports.
Spain did find a seat at the table; with the then French President Nicolas Sarközy coming to its rescue. France was uniquely placed as it was the then President of EU and G20 member, hence it had two seats. It yielded one to its South-West neighbour. In 2010, during the Seoul Summit of G20, Spain was elevated to the status of a ‘Permanent Guest’.
