6th G7 summit

6th G7 summit
San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice
Host countryItaly
Dates22–23 June 1980
Follows5th G7 summit
Precedes7th G7 summit

The 6th G7 Summit was held at Venice, Italy between 22 and 23 June 1980. The venue for the summit meetings was the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in the Venetian lagoon.[1]

The Group of Seven (G7) was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada (since 1976),[2] and the President of the European Commission (starting officially in 1981).[3] The summits were not meant to be linked formally with wider international institutions; and in fact, a mild rebellion against the stiff formality of other international meetings was a part of the genesis of cooperation between France's president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's chancellor Helmut Schmidt as they conceived the first Group of Six (G6) summit in 1975.[4]

  1. ^ Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA): Summit Meetings in the Past.
  2. ^ Saunders, Doug. "Weight of the world too heavy for G8 shoulders," Archived 2008-10-11 at the Wayback Machine Globe and Mail (Toronto). July 5, 2008 -- n.b., the G7 becomes the Group of Eight (G7) with the inclusion of Russia starting in 1997.
  3. ^ Reuters: "Factbox: The Group of Eight: what is it?", July 3, 2008.
  4. ^ Reinalda, Bob and Bertjan Verbeek. (1998). Autonomous Policy Making by International Organizations, p. 205.