World leaders call for emergency G20 summit to tackle virus crisis
A GROUP of current and former world leaders, including exPrime Ministers Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Sir John Major, is calling for an urgent G20 summit on coronavirus to be convened.
A joint letter from 225 past and present world leaders, economists and health experts calls for a £2 trillion plan to support the fight against Covid-19 and stimulate the global economy.
The G20, a forum for nations and the EU to discuss economic matters, is not currently due to meet until November.
The letter says quicker action is needed to prevent an even deeper worldwide recession and health crisis.
Poorer countries are the most at risk, the letter says, and it calls for 76 nations to be released from debt payments, a doubling of the
TONY BLAIR:
World Bank’s emergency aid fund and £5.6bn towards vaccines.
The letter says: “Without action from the G20, the recession caused by the pandemic will only deepen, hurting all economies and the world’s most marginalised and poorest peoples and nations the most.
“Representing, as it does, 85 per cent of the world’s nominal GDP, the G20 has the capacity to lead the mobilisation of resources on the scale required. We urge leaders to do so immediately.”
Former Prime Minister Mr Brown, who chaired the G20 summit in 2009, said: “As our letter states, the world is at a critical moment.
“Without a G20 leaders’ meeting online soon and certainly long before the end of November, a vacuum in global leadership will open up just at the time when we need global action most – to avoid a second wave of Covid coming out of the poorest countries and to move the world economy from rescue operations to planning a global recovery.”
The letter also calls for global co-operation to develop vaccines as well as action against tax havens, with sanctions issued against countries which breach the rules.