Spain should push for G8 membership: thinktank
MADRID - Spain should push to be a member of the Group of Eight (G8) club of leading economies now that its output has surpassed that of G8 member Canada, an influential thinktank said on Monday.
The Financial Studies Foundation presented a study setting out Spain‘s credentials to be part of the G8 at a meeting of its board, which includes some of Spain‘s top business executives.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the foundation‘s honorary chairman, also attended.
"The Financial Studies Foundation will support Spain‘s presence in the Group of Eight most industrialized countries...," the group said in a statement.
The World Bank ‘s 2004 ranking of countries by Gross Domestic Product, released in July, showed Spain had overtaken Canada to become the world‘s eighth-biggest economy.
Spain‘s economy, in its 12th year of uninterrupted growth, produced just under $1 trillion of output in 2004, according to the World Bank figures. China‘s sharp upwards revision of its output last week still left Spain in the eighth slot.
The G8 includes the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia.
The study, directed by University of Navarre professor Luis Ravina, said Spain met the requirements to enter the G8 and that Spain‘s presence in international financial bodies should increase significantly, in line with its international weight.
"Access to the G8 and other groups of countries must be a constant demand of Spain," Ravina said.
However, he noted, "it‘s clear that clubs tend to want to have few members with rights."
The study points out that the main obstacle to Spain joining the G8 is that its membership would not make the group more representative at a world level.
Since four European Union members (Britain, France, Germany and Italy) already belong to the G8, the United States and Japan would oppose Spain, another EU member, joining, it said.
There was also the argument that the euro zone -- of which Spain, France, Germany and Italy are members -- should speak with a single voice, it said.
Short of individual membership, Spain‘s influence in international groupings should be increased through euro zone representation in such groups, the study said.
In his speech to the foundation, Zapatero did not say whether he supported Spanish membership of the G8.
But he noted that the emergence of new economic powers in the last 15 years had made the Group of Seven (the G8 without Russia) less relevant.
He said important new international groups were taking shape, such as the G20, which includes the G8 countries, leading developing nations such as China, India and Brazil, and the EU. The G20 accounts for nearly 90 percent of world output, he said.
"Spain must be an active member of the new world that is being created. Spain needs ideas and thoughts on the role we must play in the world and on the kind of institutions we need and want," Zapatero added.
