George Osborne on eurozone crisis talks at G20 summit - video. G20 summit: slumping to the occasion. Yes they Cannes?
Sadly, in the end, no they couldn't. It is important, nevertheless, not to overstate the failure of the Cannes G20 summit. This is not apocalypse – or even Acropolis – now. Modern summits are an ongoing bargaining process, not a one-off, all-or-nothing shoot-out. But it is just as important not to understate the missed opportunities and the perilous consequences either.
The easy excuse is to blame Greece. That judgment can now be extended to the G20 too. It may not seem from the reporting as if the G20 was about anything other than righting Europe's banks and public finances. Any summit is better than no summit at all. Silvio Berlusconi shrugs off IMF's financial checks on Italy. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the G20 summit in Cannes.
Photograph: Christophe Karaba/EPA Silvio Berlusconi insisted Italy has no financial problems – even as its cost of borrowing rose to dangerously high levels and the president, Giorgio Napolitano, warned that the country is undergoing its worst crisis since the second world war. As fears rose that the euro crisis is spreading to Italy and the embattled prime minister's majority continued to crumble, Berlusconi put on a typically upbeat performance in Cannes, defying reports of his political demise and denying that a planned IMF check-up on his reform programme was a humiliating limitation on his sovereignty. Berlusconi insisted Italy was in rude financial health, with its debts under control, pointing to full restaurants as proof of its economic strength.
The Italian prime minister said he had turned down an offer from the International Monetary Fund to extend Italy a line of credit. G20 host Nicolas Sarkozy hails progress as he appeals to French voters. The G20 host Nicolas Sarkozy had told Cannes he was a natural optimist.
But the French president ended his G20 on such a note of self-congratulation that some wondered if he had spent two days at a completely different summit to the rest of the depressed delegates. While financial uncertainty and Greek political turmoil continued and world markets fell – after the London G20 they rose – Sarkozy gave a rallying press conference to persuade the French electorate that he was still the saviour not just of the eurozone, but the world financial system, champion of the poor and needy, and the man who was delivering financial regulation and morality to the world of money. It was not just that he was down in the polls and faces a difficult re-election battle next year. France's AAA credit rating is in peril which would trigger Sarkozy's political death, growth is faltering, confidence is down and on Monday the French government is expected to announce another round of austerity measures.
Global recession grows closer as G20 summit fails. Cameron tells eurozone member states to solve their own problems.
Link to video: Cameron: Britain won't invest in eurozone bailout fund A world recession has drawn closer after a fractious G20 summit failed to agree fresh financial help for distressed countries and debt-ridden Italy was forced to agree to the International Monetary Fund monitoring its austerity programme. Financial markets fell sharply after the two days of talks in Cannes broke up in disarray, amid concerns that Italy will now replace Greece at the centre of Europe's deepening debt crisis. UK hopes that the Germans would relent and allow the European Central Bank to become the lender of last resort for the euro were also dashed. On a day of unremitting gloom and yet more market turbulence, the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, won a late-night confidence vote in his parliament after making a speech in which he promised to start powersharing talks to form a caretaker coalition government.