UofT G8 Information Centre: 2003 Evian Interim Compliance Report

2003 Evian Interim Compliance Report

Professor John Kirton, Dr. Ella Kokotsis and the
University of Toronto G8 Research Group

February 7, 2004

The 2003 Evian Interim Compliance Report, which reviews progress made on selected commitments set out at the 2003 Evian Summit, is now available.

• Introduction
• Table A: 2003 Evian Interim Compliance Scores
• Table B: 2002 Kananaskis Interim Compliance Scores
• Table C: G8 Compliance Assessments by Country, 1996–2003

Download the full 2003 Evian Interim Compliance Report (PDF, 107 pages)
• Introduction [PDF]
• World Economy and Growth [PDF]
• Information and Communication Technology [PDF]
• Trade: Multilateral Trade Negotiations [PDF]
• Development: Official Development Assistance [PDF]
• Debt: Highly Indebted Poor Countries [PDF]
• Environment (Marine Environment) [PDF]
• Health: AIDS/Infectious Diseases [PDF]
• Crime: Terrorist Financing [PDF]
• Terrorism: Counter-Terrorism Action Group [PDF]
• Transport Security [PDF]
• Weapons of Mass Destruction [PDF]
• Energy [PDF]

Introduction

The University of Toronto’s G8 Research Group has completed its second Interim Compliance Report based on the results of the Evian Summit from June 2003 to January 2004. This period allows us to assess the extent to which compliance with the Summit’s priority commitments have been complied with as the Summit hosting rotation changes on January 1 from one member to the next in the sequence.

A summary of the interim compliance scores is available in Table A, with an individual analytical assessment by country and issue area below. Although the final report will provide a more detailed and comprehensive assessment of the 2003 Evian scores, some preliminary observations can be made based on the interim results.

During the post-Evian period, G8 members have complied with their priority commitments across the 12 major issue areas 47% of the time (see Table A). This average is based on a scale whereby 100% equals perfect compliance and –100% means that the member governments are either non-compliant or are in fact doing the opposite of what they committed to.[1]

Although compliance scores during the interim period vary by country, the spread across all countries is considerably less than compared with the Kananaskis interim compliance report from the year before (see Table B). For example, where the Kananaskis compliance variation between the G8 countries was 77% (Canada at 77% and Italy at 0), the deviation between the highest and lowest complying members for the Evian results is only 25% (58% for Canada and 33% for Italy). These results seem to indicate a significant narrowing of the compliance gap by G8 member states.

Similar to the Kananaskis interim results, the highest complying members across the 12 priority issue areas post-Evian are Canada and the United Kingdom, with a tied score of 58%. France (the hosting country) and the United States (the next in the hosting rotation) tie for second place with an overall compliance score of 50%. This again compares with the 2002 interim results, where France and the U.S. fall in third and fourth place respectively. Germany, Japan and Russia follow with a score of 42%, with Italy in last place at 33%. These scores again compare almost identically with the 2002 Kananaskis interim results.

These interim results also indicate that compliance during this period also varied considerably by issue area, with commitments focused on Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) scoring perfect compliance scores across all G8 countries. Compliance scores are also high in the area of Development Assistance (ODA) and Health (AIDS) at 88%. Transport Security and the Environment (Marine) score below the overall average at 38%, while Crime and World Economy score 25% and 13% respectively. A “work in progress” [2] is found for commitments associated with Debt (HIPC) and Energy. And finally, a score in the negative range is revealed for commitments relating to Trade (–25%) indicating that not only have the G8 not acted to fulfill their priority commitment in this issue area since Evian, they have in fact done the opposite of what they committed to.

Once again, these interim Evian results reveal striking similarities with the interim Kananaskis results, as political security issues (terrorism and WMD) yield the highest compliance by the member states across both years. Development, the environment and global health fall in the middle range, with compliance across both interim reports the lowest with G8 trade initiatives.

In overall terms, however, the interim compliance scores for Evian compare quite favourably with the interim compliance scores from the Kananaskis Summit the year prior. Overall compliance by country has increased by 20%, climbing from 28% at Kananaskis to 47% in Evian. Similarly, compliance by issue area has also increased by a significant margin during this period, climbing from 30% in Kananaskis to 47% in Evian. Overall compliance, therefore, compared for both interim periods, has increased from 28.5% in Kananaskis to 47% in Evian.

Although a comprehensive assessment cannot be made until the final compliance scores are in, to date, these interim Evian scores compare favourably with the overall compliance scores for Cologne 1999 (39%), Birmingham 1998 (45%), Denver 1997 (27%) and Lyon 1996 (36%). Only Genoa 2001 (49.5%) and Okinawa 2000 (81.4%) have yielded higher overall compliance scores over the last cycle of Summitry (see Table C).

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Special Considerations

In evaluating the results of this report, the following considerations should be kept in mind.

Compliance has been assessed against a selected set of priority commitments, rather than all commitments the last summit produced. The priority commitments selected were not randomly chosen but identified to produce a representative subset of the total according to such dimensions as issue areas, ambition, specified time for completion, instruments used and, more generally, the degree of precision, obligation and delegation of each.
In addition to the specific commitments assessed here, summits have value in establishing new principles in normative directions, in creating and highlighting issue areas and agenda items, and in altering the publicly allowable discourse used. Furthermore, some of the most important decisions reached and consensus forged at summits may be done entirely in private and not encoded in the public communiqué record.
Some commitments inherently take longer to be complied with than the time available between one summit and the next.
In some cases, it may be wise not to comply with a summit commitment, if global conditions have dramatically changed since the commitment was made or if new knowledge has become available about how a particular problem can best be solved.
As each of the member countries has its own constitutional, legal and institutional processes for undertaking action at the national level, each is free to act in particular cases on a distinctive national time scale. Of particular importance here is the annual cycle for the creation of budgets, legislative approval and the appropriation of funds.
Commitments encoded in the G8 communiqué may also be encoded precisely or partially in communiqués from other international forums, the decisions of other international organizations, or even national statements such as the State of the Union Address in the U.S., the Queen’s Speech in the UK and the Speech from the Throne in Canada. Without detailed process-tracing, it cannot be assumed that compliant behaviour on the part of countries is fully caused by the single fact of a previous G8 commitment.
Compliance here is assessed against the precise, particular commitments made by the G8, rather than what some might regard as necessary or appropriate action to solve the problem being addressed.
With compliance assessed on a three-point scale, judgements inevitably arise about whether particular actions warrant the specific numerical value assigned. As individual members can sometimes take different actions to comply with the same commitment, no standardized cross-national evaluative criterion can always be used. Comments regarding the judgements in each case, detailed in the extensive accompanying notes, are welcome (see below).
Because the evaluative scale used in this compliance report runs from –100 percent to +100 percent, it should assumed that any score in the positive range represents at least some compliance with the specific commitments made by the G8. It is not known if commitments in other international forums or at the national level on occasions such as the State of the Union Address, Queen’s Speech or Speech from the Throne, etc., are complied with to a greater or lesser degree than the commitments made by the G8.
It may be that commitments containing high degrees of precision, obligation and delegation, with short specified timetables for implementation, may induce governments to act simply to meet the specified commitment rather than in ways best designed to address core and underlying problems over a longer term.
In some cases, full compliance by all members of the G8 with a commitment is contingent on co-operative behaviour on the part of other actors.

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Feedback

The information contained within this interim report provides G8 member countries and other stakeholders with an early indication of their compliance results to date, thereby setting the foundation for future action prior to the Sea Island Summit in June 2004. As with previous compliance reports, this report has been produced as an invitation for others to provide additional or more complete information on country compliance with the interim results of the 2003 Evian commitments. As always, comments are welcomed and would be considered as part of an analytic reassessment. Please send your feedback to g8@utoronto.ca. A complete assessment of the compliance scores will be made available in the final report and posted on the G8 Information Centre at www.g8.utoronto.ca by mid-May — approximately two weeks prior to the 2004 Sea Island Summit in Georgia, U.S.

Notes

[1] For a complete compliance methodological explanation, please visit the University of Toronto G8 Information Centre at www.g8.utoronto.ca/g7/evaluations/methodology/g7c2.htm.
[2] A “work in progress” is depicted by an overall score of “0.”

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Table A: 2003 Evian Interim Compliance Scores

	Canada	France	Germany	Italy	Japan	Russia	UK	U.S.	Individual Issue Average
World Economy/Growth	0	0	1	–1	0	0	0	1	0.13
ICT	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1.00
Trade (MTN)	0	0	0	0	0	–1	0	–1	–0.25
Development (ODA)	1	1	1	1	1	0	1	1	0.88
Debt (HIPC)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Environment (Marine)	1	0	0	0	0	1	1	1	0.88
Health (AIDS)	1	1	0	1	1	1	1	1	0.88
Crime (Terrorist Financing)	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.25
Terrorism (CTAG)	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1.00
Transport Security	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	1	0.38
WMD	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1.00
Energy	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Individual Country Average	0.58	0.50	0.42	0.33	0.42	0.42	0.58	0.50
Overall Issue Average									+0.47
Overall Country Average									+0.47
Overall Compliance Average									+0.47

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Table B: 2002 Kananaskis Interim Compliance Scores

	Canada	France	Germany	Italy	Japan	Russia	UK	U.S.	Individual Issue Average
Africa, Good Governance	1	0	0	N/A	0	N/A	1	1	0.50
Africa, Health	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0.25
Africa, Peer Review	0	0	0	0	0	N/A	N/A	N/A	0
Arms Control, Disarmament	1	0	0	0	1	1	1	1	0.63
Conflict Prevention	1	1	0	N/A	N/A	N/A	0	1	0.60
Development, HIPC	0	0	0	–1	–1	–1	0	–1	–0.50
Development, ODA	1	1	0	0	0	0	1	1	0.50
Economic Growth, Agricultural Trade	1	0	0	0	N/A	N/A	0	–1	0
Economic Growth, Free Trade	1	0	0	0	N/A	0	0	0	0.14
Environment, Sustainable Agriculture	0	0	0	0	0	N/A	0	0	0
Environment, Water	1	1	0	N/A	0	N/A	1	0	0.50
Fighting Terrorism	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1.00
Transnational Crime, Corruption	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.25
Individual Country Average	0.77	0.38	0.08	0	0.10	0.14	0.42	0.25
Overall Issue Average									0.30
Overall Country Average									0.27
Overall Compliance Average									29%

Note: The average score by issue area is the average of all countries’ compliance scores for that issue. The average score by country is the average of all issue area compliance scores for a given country. Where information on a country’s compliance score for a given issue area was not available, the symbol “N/A” appears in the respective column and no compliance score is awarded. Countries were excluded from the averages if the symbol “N/A” appears in the respective column.

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Table C: G8 Compliance Assessments by Country, 1996–2003

	Lyon 1996–97 [a]	Denver 1997–98 [b]	Birmingham 1998–99 [c]	Cologne 1999–2000 [d]	Okinawa 2000–01 [e]	Genoa 2001–02 [f]	Kananaskis 2002–03 (interim) [g]	Kananaskis 2002–03 (final) [h]	Evian 2003–04 (interim) [i]
France	0.26	0	0.25	0.34	0.92	0.69	0.38	0.64	0.50
U.S.	0.42	0.34	0.60	0.50	0.67	0	1.00	0	0.5
UK	0.42	0.50	0.75	0.50	1.00	0.69	0.42	0.55	0.58
Germany	0.58	0.17	0.25	0.17	1.00	0.59	0.08	0.18	0.42
Japan	0.21	0.50	0.20	0.67	0.82	0.44	0.10	0.18	0.42
Italy	0.16	0.50	0.67	0.34	0.89	0.57	0	–0.11	0.38
Canada	0.47	0.17	0.50	0.67	0.83	0.82	0.77	0.82	0.58
Russia	N/A	0	0.34	0.17	0.14	0.11	0.14	0	0.42
EU	N/A	N/A	N/A	0.17	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Average	0.36	0.27	0.45	0.39	0.80	0.53	0.27	0.33	0.47

[a] Applies to 19 priority issues, embracing the economic, transnational and political security domains.
[b] Applies to six priority issues, embracing the economic, transnational and political security domains.
[c] Applies to seven priority issues, embracing the economic, transnational and political security domains (human trafficking).
[d] Applies to six priority issues, embracing the economic, transnational and political security domains (terrorism).
[e] Applies to 12 priority issues, embracing economic, transnational, and political security domains (conflict prevention, arms control and terrorism).
[f] Applies to nine priority issues, embracing economic, transnational, and political security domains (terrorism).
[g] Applies to the 13 priority issues assessed in the first interim compliance report, embracing economic, transnational, and political security domains (arms control, conflict prevention and terrorism).
[h] Applies to the 11 priority issues assessed in the final report, embracing economic, transnational and political security domains (arms control, conflict prevention and terrorism). Excluded in the final report, which were assessed in the interim are debt of the poorest (HIPC) and ODA.
[i] Applies to the 12 priority issues, embracing economic, transnational and political security domains (WMD, transport security and terrorism).

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	This Information System is provided by the University of Toronto Library and the G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto.
	Please send comments to: g8@utoronto.ca This page was last updated August 15, 2024.