G8 Agenda: Parliament dissatisfied with Government
The green fraction (Bündnis 90/Grüne) in the German Parliament (Bundestag) is dissatisfied with the information policy concerning the priorities of the G8 summit. They claim that the G8 agenda has been published in various newspapers (see the summary), but the parliament has not been informed. Therefore they initiated a inquiry (so called Kleine Anfrage) which the the government has to answer within a short time period. In September 2006 they had already initiated a motion to put Africa on the G8 Agenda.
The news released by the Bundestag news service can be found here, the document with the Kleine Anfrage can be found here (link is momentarily not working).
The fraction of the Linkspartei (left-wing party) comments the G8 agenda in a press release by MP Ulla Lötzer and particularly mentions Hedge Fonds and Africa:
“Initiatives to control the activities of hedge fonds are principally support because hedge fonds are a danger to the stability of finance markets. But it seems that big announcements will be followed by short steps. Transparency is not enough to ensure efficient controls. Private Equity Fonds have to be included. Both Hedge Fonds and Private Equity Fonds are developing disastrous activities for companies, buying and cannibalize them and only have short-term high returns of investment at the expense of workers in mind.
Also the focus on the situation in Africa sounds goods. The most effective help for Africa would be to implement the agreements during the WTO-negotiations in Hongkong and to cut the export subsidies for agricultural products. Then the agricultural market of the African states would not be artificially flooded with cheap imports from the industrial countries. Measures for the implementation of the right to nutrition sovereignty and nutrition security would be necessary instead of agreement on investment and service liberalisatio in the interest of European corporations. This is what we we and others will demand at the Counter-Summit to the June-Summit in Heiligendamm.”
November 20th, 2006 at 14:32
[...] The federal government met on Sunday to discuss the agenda of the upcoming G8 and EU presidency (see German transcript of the Press Conference and English press release). The priorities seemed to be the EU presidency (such as Turkey, EU Borders, Constitution) but climate protection seems to be a growing (public) priority for the G8 agenda. However the opposition in the German parliament, especially the Green party, is not satisfied: they claim that Merkel and Germany need to become active now and not focus on what happens 2012 (see Article in Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung) The cabinet did discuss a motto for their EU presidency: “Gemeinsam gelingt Europa” – Together Europe succeeds. Maybe the G8 motto will be similar: Together the G8 succeeds. [...]