The Deauville Summit Schedule

Analytical Studies > Analysis on the Deauville Summit
G8 Summits > 2011 Deauville Summit

G8 Research Group
May 26, 2011

The summit will start on Thursday 26 May at 12:45 with the official welcome of leaders. There are two days of meetings — Thursday and Friday. The first day will only be G8 plus 2 — the president of the European Union and the European Commission. There will be a working lunch on May 26 on solidarity with Japan and the global economy. It is important to send a strong signal for Japan. This was something not foreseen in January but it has become one of the big topics for the G8 both for the global economy to try to help Japan cope with that series of catastrophes of a few months ago, and also be a topic for the G20, and for nuclear safety.

The first working session of the afternoon of Thursday, May 26, will be on climate change and cooperation with emerging countries. The G8 is fully aware that its members are developed industrialized countries and thus should lead global partnerships on various issues such as climate change.

The second session of the afternoon will be on the internet. There will be one hour of discussion with eight internet leaders, who will present to the G8 leaders some of the ideas that emerged from the two days of discussion in Paris on May 24-25. Then there will be a break enabling the leaders to give press conferences. Dinner that evening will focus on all political issues, especially non-proliferation, Iran and the other political issues of the day. The Middle East Peace Process will also be discussed at dinner. The results will probably be reflected in the final declaration. But the key interest is the possibility to discuss these matters in a comfortable setting on the planche de Deauville.

Friday will have an outreach discussion with various involved leaders. There will be 25 heads of delegations: 18 heads of state and government, the two heads of the European Unionand five leaders of international organizations — Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, John Lipsky of the International Monetary Fund, Amr Moussa of the Arab League, and Jean Ping of the African Union. So there will be an enlarged session on the second day of the summit.

The first meeting on Friday will be on the adoption of the declaration which will have been finalized during the night. Some political issues like North Korea and terrorism will be discussed as well. It will be only half an hour. These are the topics where the sherpas have worked very hard and that are already cleared for the leaders.

The second session is on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) spring, with the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and the international organizations, especially the Arab League. It will be about one hour from 10:15 to 11:15. The third morning session will be with the African countries, including the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), a G8 tradition and also — and this was an initiative of host Nicolas Sarkozy that was accepted by his G8 colleagues — three “new” democracies of Africa: Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire, Béji Caïd Essebsi of Guinea and Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger. These three leaders were each elected through a democratic process in the past month, and indeed Sarkozy attended Ouattara’s inauguration the Saturday before the Deauville Summit. At this session, the leaders will discuss the needs of these countries as well as the regional crisis, fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and development. This session will go through lunch.

After lunch come the press conferences in the afternoon. Sarkozy plans to meet with the non-governmental organizations (NGOs). There is no specific counter summit at Deauville, but France has invited about 40 NGOs to participate in a way to extend the work of the summit. The meeting will be hosted in a separate place in the press conference centre at Deauville's Hippodrome, with as much interaction with the various leaders as possible.

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