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Analysis > Compliance

2020 G20 Riyadh Summit Interim Compliance Report

For the period of 23 November 2020 to 22 May 2021

Prepared by
Kaylin Dawe, Mary Noh and the G20 Research Group
and Alexander Ignatov and the Center for International Institutions Research
Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow

29 July 2021

The 2020 G20 Riyadh Summit Interim Compliance Report reviews progress made on 20 commitments were assessed based on actions taken between 23 November 2020 to 22 May 2021.

Download the full 2020 G20 Riyadh Summit Interim Compliance Report (PDF, 815 pages).

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Preface

Since the G20 leaders met at their first summit in 2008 in Washington, the G20 Research Group at the University of Toronto and the Center for International Institutions Research of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), and formerly with the International Organizations Research Institute at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), in Moscow have produced reports on their progress in implementing the priority commitments made at each summit. These reports monitor each G20 member's efforts to implement a carefully chosen selection of the many commitments produced at each summit. The reports are offered to the general public and to policy makers, academics, civil society, the media and interested citizens around the world in an effort to make the work of the G20 more transparent, accessible and effective, and to provide scientific data to enable the meaningful analysis of the causes of compliance, including those that leaders can change to improve compliance and the impact of this important informal international institution. Previous reports are available at the G20 Information Centre.

The G20 Research Group has been working with Marina Larionova's team at RANEPA and previously at HSE since initiating this G20 compliance research in 2009, after the Washington Summit in November 2008. The initial report, covering only one commitment made at that summit, tested the compliance methodology developed by the G8 Research Group and adapted it to the G20.

To make its assessments, the G20 Research Group relies on publicly available information, documentation and media reports. To ensure accuracy, comprehensiveness and integrity, we encourage comments from stakeholders. Indeed, scores can be recalibrated if new material becomes available. All feedback remains anonymous. Responsibility for the contents of this report lies exclusively with the authors and analysts of the G20 Research Group.

Professor John Kirton
Director, G20 Research Group

Introduction and Summary

The G20 2020 Riyadh Interim Compliance Report is prepared by the G20 Research Group based at the University of Toronto and its Russian partner at the Center for International Institutional Research of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). The report analyzes compliance by G20 members with 20 priority commitments carefully selected from the total of 107 commitments made at the Riyadh Summit hosted by Saudi Arabia on 21–22 November 2020. This interim report covers relevant actions taken by the G20 members between 23 November 2020 to 22 May 2021. The final report, which will cover the full period between the 2020 and the 2021 summits, will be released on the eve of the Rome Summit that Italy will host on 30–31 October 2021.

Methodology and Scoring System

This report draws on the methodology developed by the G7 Research Group, which has been monitoring G7/8 compliance since 1996. The International Organisations Research Institute at the Higher School of Economics joined this multi-year project in 2005. The use of this methodology builds cross-institutional and cross-member consistency and also allows compatibility with compliance assessments of other institutions.

The methodology uses a scale from −1 to +1, where +1 indicates full compliance with the stated commitment, −1 indicates a failure to comply or action taken that is directly opposite to the stated instruments or goal of the commitment, and 0 indicates partial compliance or work in progress, such as initiatives that have been launched but are not yet near completion and whose full results can therefore not be assessed. Each member assessed receives a score of −1, 0 or +1 for each commitment. For convenience, the scores in the tables have been converted to percentages, where −1 equals 0 per cent and +1 equals 100 per cent.

[The formula to convert a score into a percentage is P = 50 × (S + 1), where P is the percentage and S is the score.]

A −1 compliance score does not necessarily imply an unwillingness to comply on the part of G20 members. In some cases, policy actions can take multiple compliance cycles to implement and measure. As the G20 Research Group and RANEPA continue to monitor developments, progress made by members can be recorded in future compliance reports.

The Compliance Coding Manual that describes the methodology in detail is available on the G20 Information Centre website at https://www.g20.utoronto.ca/analysis/index.html#method.

Commitment Breakdown

The G20 made a total of 107 commitments at the Riyadh Summit.2 These commitments, as identified by the G20 Research Group and RANEPA, are drawn from the official Riyadh Leaders' Declaration.

[A commitment is defined as a discrete, specific, publicly expressed, collectively agreed statement of intent; a promise by summit members that they will undertake future action to move toward, meet or adjust to an identified target. More details are contained in the Reference Manual for Summit Commitment and Compliance Coding).]

Selection of Commitments

For each compliance cycle (that is, the period between summits), the research team selects commitments that reflect the breadth of the G20 agenda and also reflect the priorities of the summit's host, while balancing the selection to allow for comparison with past and future summits, following the methodology developed by the G7 Research Group. The selection also replicates the breakdown of issue areas and the proportion of commitments in each one. Primary criteria for priority commitment selection are the comprehensiveness and relevance to the summit, the G20 and the world, as well as individual and collective pledges. Selected commitments must also meet secondary criteria of performance measurability and ability to comply to some degree within a year, as well as the tertiary criterion of significance as identified by scientific teams and relevant stakeholders in the host country.

For the 2020 Riyadh Interim Compliance Report, 20 priority commitments were selected for assessment by the University of Toronto and the RANEPA teams (see Table 1).

Interim Compliance Scores

This assessment is based on relevant, publicly available information relating to actions taken from 23 November 2020 to 22 May 2021. The interim compliance scores by commitment are contained in Table 2. Country rankings are listed in Table 3 and commitment rankings are listed in Table 4.

For the full interim period, including all 20 commitments, G20 members achieved average compliance of +0.50 (75%).

Interim Compliance by Member

For interim compliance with the Riyadh Summit's priority commitments, Germany had the highest compliance at +0.95 (97%), followed by the European Union and the United Kingdom at +0.85 (93%), and then France at +0.79 (89%). Host Italy ranked eighth at +0.53 (76%) and Riyadh's host, Saudi Arabia, ranked 17th at +0.35 (68%). South Africa and India tied for the lowest compliance score, both at +0.05 (53%). The difference between the highest and lowest G20 member compliance scores is 0.90. All the scores by G20 members are listed in Table 3.

Interim Compliance by Commitment

The climate change commitment on the Paris Agreement ranked first at +0.90 (95%), followed by the macroeconomics commitment on inclusive growth at +0.85 (93%), and the health commitment on preparedness and response at +0.80 (90%). The lowest compliance was two commitments tied at +0.10 (55%): one on fossil fuels and one on marine plastic litter commitments. All the scores by commitment are listed in Table 4.

Conclusions

Many of the commitments assessed in this report have timelines that extend beyond the next summit or reflect medium- and long-term priorities. A unique feature of this report is the incorporation of deadlines for commitments monitored over multiple compliance cycles. The convergence of medium- and long-term commitments and those with deadlines in the near future reflects the nature of G20 decisions as a crisis management forum and a global governance steering institution. It also illustrates the multifaceted nature of compliance assessment. As the relationship among short, medium, and long-term commitments becomes clearer, the compliance landscape for many of these priority commitments may change over the course of future compliance periods.

Future Research and Reports

The information contained in this report provides G20 members and other stakeholders with an indication of their compliance in the first 10-month period following the Osaka Summit. This report has been produced as an invitation for others to provide additional or more complete information on compliance during the period under study. Feedback should be sent to g20@utoronto.ca.

Considerations and Limitations

Several elements affect the findings contained in this report. While the purpose of the report is to monitor compliance with G20 commitments, it is necessary to ensure that the monitoring mechanism is realistic and considers the context within which the commitments are made. With new commitments, more attention must be paid to the initial implementation constraints faced by members. One way to accommodate these constraints is to regard the intent to implement policy measures as an illustration of compliance or being "on track" towards compliance. This initial leeway should only be granted for new commitments; intent is not a suitable indicator of compliance for medium-term or longstanding commitments. Over time as commitments become integrated in the G20 compliance mechanism, compliance guidelines should become more stringent (as members become more accustomed to the nature of the issue and the requirements for compliance).

See also Appendix: General Considerations

Appendix: General Considerations

In evaluating the results of this report, the following considerations should be kept in mind.

Assessments contained in this report apply to commitment-related actions taken by G20 members only since the commitments were declared publicly at the last summit.

Compliance has been assessed against a selected set of priority commitments, rather than all commitments contained in the summit documents. The selection is intended to produce a representative subset of the total body of commitments. An ideal set of priority commitments represents proportionally the amount of attention paid to each policy area in summit documents, reflects the relative ambition of summit commitments, and holds as many G20 members to account for compliance as possible.

In addition to producing commitments, summits provide value by establishing new principles and norms, creating and highlighting issues and issue areas and altering the traditional discourse used to discuss priorities. Some of the most important decisions reached at summits may be done in private and not encoded in the public record of the summit documents.

Some commitments cover several years and thus compliance takes longer than the summit-tosummit timeframe applied in this report. For this reason, full compliance (denoted by a +1 score) might not require that G20 members carry out a given commitment completely, but might instead demand clear, visible progress commensurate with the overall timetable as well as public statements of support of commitment objectives.

In some cases, a G20 member might choose not to comply with a particular summit commitment for good reason, for example if global conditions have changed dramatically since the commitment was made or if new knowledge has become available about how a particular problem can best be solved.

As each G20 member has its own constitutional, legal and institutional processes for undertaking action at the national level (and in the case of the European Union at the supranational level), each member is free to act according to its own legislative schedule. Of particular importance here is the annual schedule for creating budgets, seeking legislative approval and appropriating funds.

Commitments in G20 summit documents might also be included, in whole or in part, in documents released by other international forums, as the decisions of other international organizations or even national statements such as the State of the Union Address in the US, the Queen's Speech in the UK and the Speech from the Throne in Canada. Merely repeating a G20 commitment in another forum does not count fully as compliant behaviour.

This report assesses G20 members' action in accordance with the text of actual, specific commitments made in G20 summit documents. Because commitments demand that policymakers and regulators act specifically to meet the identified objectives, this report holds policymakers accountable for pushing and passing recommended policies. Furthermore, compliance is assessed against the precise, particular commitment, rather than what might be regarded as a necessary or appropriate action to solve the problem being addressed.

As individual members can take different actions to comply with the same commitment, no standardized cross-national evaluative criterion can be universally applied. The interpretive guidelines attempt to provide an equitable method for assessing compliance.

Because the evaluative scale used in this compliance report runs from −1 to +1, any score in the positive range represents at least some degree of compliance.

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Table 1: 2020 G20 Riyadh Summit Commitments Selected for Compliance Monitoring
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Table 2: 2020 G20 Riyadh Summit Interim Compliance Scores
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Note: n/a = Not applicable.

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Table 3: 2020 G20 Riyadh Summit Interim Compliance Scores
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Table 4: 2020 G20 Riyadh Summit Interim Compliance by Commitment
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Table 5: G20 Compliance by Member, 2008–2020
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n/a = not available

Table 5: G20 Compliance by Member, 2008–2020, continued

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