Group of Twenty (G20)

The Group of Twenty is an intergovernmental forum of 19 countries, the European Union and the African Union, formally established September 26, 1999 with its inaugural finance-ministers' meeting held in Berlin that December. It was conceived directly in response to the emerging-market debt crises of the late 1990s, the Mexican peso crisis, the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 1998 Russian financial crisis, which demonstrated to its founders that a rapidly globalizing world needed a broader, permanent forum for financial stability than the G7 or the Bretton Woods institutions alone could provide. The G20 operates without a permanent secretariat or staff; its chairing presidency rotates annually among member states, each host establishing a temporary secretariat for its own term. Its remit covers international financial stability, climate-change mitigation and sustainable development through annual meetings of heads of state and government, expanded from its original finance-ministers-only format after the 2008 financial crisis elevated it to a leaders'-level summit.