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Japan will be hosting its first annual G20 meeting of heads of state and government on 28 and 29 June 2019. The country is taking a constructive approach to this task and has adopted its own agenda, but despite this, expectations of the Osaka Summit are low.
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We can assume that the summit will largely focus on working through the existing G20 agenda. At the same time, the Japanese prime minister is in need of a successful international summit in order to demonstrate that Japan, as the world’s third largest economy, is in a position to have an impact on global forums. The country sees itself as a counterweight to China in East Asia and, at the very least, security considerations play an implicit role in all the items on the agenda.
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Prime Minister Abe will try to push his agenda in the areas of digital transformation and international data traffic. World trade and climate policy will also be important issues in Osaka because Japan, as a globalised high-tech nation, is keen to see progress in these policy areas. There is likely to be limited progress on reforms to the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
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There seems little likelihood of new multilateral initiatives among the participants, despite the fact that the host will probably be seeking to strengthen multilateralism.
663highland, wikimedia
