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Analysis > Compliance

Preliminary
2020 G20 Extraordinary Virtual Summit Interim Compliance Report

From 27 March 2020 to 26 May 2020

Prepared by
Alessandra Cicci and the G20 Research Group, Toronto,
and Irina Popova and the Center for International Institutions Research
of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow

14 September 2020

Feedback, as always, is welcome and is kept anonymous.
Unlike the regular annual compliance reports produced by the G20 Research Group and RANEPA, this report has not been sent to stakeholders for review prior to publication. Scores can be recalibrated if new material becomes available that meets the requirements set by the methodology used for monitoring compliance.

This is therefore a preliminary report and we encourage readers to send comments to
G20@utoronto.ca

Download the full Preliminary 2020 G20 Extraordinary Virtual Summit Interim Compliance Report (PDF, 320 pages) or read the Introduction with key findings with the scores below.

The report contains the following sections, which can be downloaded separately:

• Introduction with key findings and tables
• Health: Strengthening the World Health Organization
• Health: System Strengthening
• Health: Digital Technologies
• Health: Research and Development
• Global Economy: Policy Tools
• Global Economy: Fiscal Support
• Global Economy: Debt Vulnerabilities
• Labour and Employment: Job and Income Protection
• Trade: Flow of Goods and Services
• Trade: Avoiding Unnecessary Interference
• Finance: Global Cooperation

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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), 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 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 G7 Research Group and adapted it to the G20.
This special report has been produced by a special team of anlaysts associated with the G20 Research Group and RANEPA to provide a rapid assessment of G20 members' compliance over the first two months following the G20's Extraordinary Virtual Summit on 26 March 2020 of the 11 priority commitments among the 47 produced by the leaders. Unlike the regular annual interim and final compliance reports produced by the G20 Research Group and RANEPA, this report has not been sent to stakeholders for their input prior to its publication.

To make its assessments, the G20 Research Group and RANEPA rely 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. We particularly invite those reading this report to provide such feedback, especially on implementing actions that are consistent with the G20 leaders' March commitments that occurred up to 26 May and in the following months. Responsibility for the contents of this special report lies exclusively with the authors and analysts.

Professor John Kirton
Director, G20 Research Group

Introduction

The G20 2020 Extraordinary Virtual Summit 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 Institutions Research of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). The report analyzes G20 members' compliance with 11 priority commitments selected from the 47 commitments made at the Extraordinary Virtual Summit hosted by Saudi Arabia on 26 March 2020 to address the COVID-19 pandemic (see Table 1). It covers relevant actions taken by the G20 members between 27 March 2020 to 26 May 2020.

This report has not been sent out for stakeholder review before publication. Therefore, the research teams welcome feedback or any publicly available material that might supplement their assessments.

Key Findings

Two months after the G20's Extraordinary Virtual Summit on 26 March 2020 members complied with its 11 priority commitments assessed at an average of 72% (see Table 2. This compliance is same as the all-time, all-subject average of 72% for G20 compliance, based on the 286 commitments assessed for compliance by the G20 Research Group and RANEPA. This Extraordinary Virtual Summit's interim compliance was reached over two months, compared with the much longer period of about a year for the 14 G20 summits before.

By member, 11 members had above-average compliance: Germany at 95%; Australia, Canada and Japan at 91%; the European Union at 86%; France at 85%; Italy at 80%; Korea at 77%; and China, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia at 73% (see Table 3). All 20 members complied in the positive range (i.e., at or above 0, or 50%).

By component institutionalized grouping, compliance was thus largely led by members of the European Union at 84% (87% without the United Kingdom), the G7 83%, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development at 85%. BRICS members averaged 62%.

By G20 hosting, the three countries that have not held the G20 presidency (India, Indonesia, South Africa) averaged 59% compliance, well below the 72% average. The members of the current governing troika (Japan, which hosted in 2019; 2020 host Saudi Arabia; and Italy, scheduled to host in 2021) averaged 81%. All three complied significantly more than with previous summits.

It should also be noted that the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected various G20 members differently, in terms of timing, incidents and economic impact.

By subject, higher compliance came with the Extraordinary Virtual Summit's commitments on the economy and employment than with compliance on trade or health (see Table 4). The one employment commitment assessed had complete compliance of 100%. The three commitments on the global economy averaged 84%. The four commitments on health averaged a low 63% (due largely to the extremely low 35% compliance with the commitment on digital technologies). The two trade commitments also averaged 63%. The one commitment on global financial cooperation at only 60% related to both the economy and health, as it referenced the World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Of the 11 commitments, 10 had compliance in the positive range (i.e., at or above 0, or 50%).

Many of the assessed commitments have timelines that extend beyond the 2020 Extraordinary Virtual Summit or reflect medium- and long-term priorities. This report incorporates 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.

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 (IORI HSE) joined this multiyear project in 2005, and Bond University participated in 2014). 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 (formerly the research team at IORI HSE) 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 leaders made 47 commitments at the Extraordinary Virtual Summit. These commitments, as identified by the G20 Research Group and RANEPA, are drawn from the official Statement on COVID-19 issued on 26 March 2020.

[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).]

Commitment Breakdown

The G20 made a total of 531 commitments at the Hamburg Summit. These commitments, as identified by the G20 Research Group and RANEPA, are drawn from the official G20 Leaders' Declaration, G20 Action Plan on Marine Litter, Hamburg Update: Taking Forward the G20 Action Plan on the 2030 Agenda, Hamburg Action Plan, G20 Initiative for Rural Youth Employment, G20 Hamburg Climate and Energy Action Plan for Growth, G20 Initiative "#eSkills4Girls," Leaders' Statement on Countering Terrorism, and G20 Africa Partnership.

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 tertiary criteria of significance as identified by scientific teams and relevant stakeholders in the host country.

For the 2020 Extraordinary Virtual Summit Compliance Report, 11 priority commitments were selected for assessment by the G20 Research Group and RANEPA teams from the 47 commitments made at the Extraordinary Virtual Summit (see Table 1).

Interim Compliance Scores

TThe assessment is based on relevant, publicly available information relating to actions taken between 27 March 2020 and 26 May 2020. The compliance scores by commitment are contained in Table 2. Country rankings are listed in Table 3 and commitment rankings are listed in Table 4. Table 5 lists the final compliance scores by country for every summit from the 2008 Washington Summit to the 2018 Buenos Aires Summit.

For the 11 commitments assessed from the 2020 Extraordinary Virtual Summit, G20 members achieved average compliance of +0.44 (72%).

Interim Compliance by Member

For compliance with the Extraordinary Virtual Summit priority commitments, Germany has the highest compliance at +0.90 (95%), followed by Australia, Canada and Japan at +0.82 (91%), and the European Union at +0.73 (83%). The lowest scoring member is Mexico with 0 (50%). The difference between the highest and lowest G20 member compliance scores is +0.90. Scores by member are listed in see Table 3.

Interim Compliance by Commitment

This particular compliance cycle has produced a high level of compliance for several areas so far. The commitment on labour and employment (job and income protection) ranked highest at +1.00 (100%), followed by the commitment on fiscal support at +0.95 (98%) and the commitments on the economic policy tools and health systems strengthening at +0.55 (78%). The lowest score was on health on leveraging digital technologies at -0.30 (35%). Scores by commitment are listed in Table 4.

Future Research and Reports

The information contained in this report provides G20 members and other stakeholders with an indication of their compliance in the period immediately following the Extraordinary Virtual Summit Summit on 26 March 2020. There are plans to produce a final report that covers the full period between the Extraordinary Virtual Summit and the Riyadh Summit scheduled to take place on 20–21 November 2020.

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. Although 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 is 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" toward compliance. This initial leeway should apply only to new commitments; intent is not accepted as a suitable indicator of compliance for medium-term or longstanding commitments. Over time, as commitments become integrated in the G20 compliance mechanism, compliance guidelines 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 Extraordinary Virtual Summit Commitments Selected for Compliance Monitoring↩

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Table 2: 2020 G20 Extraordinary Virtual Summit Interim Compliance Scores ↩

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Table 3: 2020 G20 Extraordinary Virtual Summit Interim Compliance by Member ↩

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Table 4: 2020 G20 Extraordinary Virtual Summit Interim Compliance by Commitment ↩

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Table 5: G20 Compliance by Member, 2008–2018↩

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