explain this when I answer your questions - is the best formula.SOCIAL PROTECTIONRegarding employment and social issues, the socialpartners will be fully involved in the G20's work. Wewill be holding the first ever Social Summit on the eveof the G20 Summit, alongside the Business Summit.There is no reason why we should have a BusinessSummit and not a Social Summit. And the question forFrance is how to give the International LabourOrganization more weight in global governance. Francewould like us to consider setting up a minimumstandard of universal social protection. That is not to say a single social model, which makesno sense, but a minimum standard, and France willnot resign herself to the fact that the eight ILOconventions on fundamental labour rights have notbeen ratified by all the members of the G20, whichare, for the most part, also members of the ILO. Whenyou arere a member of an organisation, you ratify the standards produced and adopted by thatorganisation.INTERNATIONAL MONETARY SYSTEMOn the instability of the international monetary systemand commodity price volatility: the currency debateran right through 2010. Some even spoke of acurrency war. The truth is we have been living with theinstability of the international monetary non-systemsince 1971. To say that a monetary system exists is aserious mistake. There has not been one since 1971.I have read many things, so allow me to address anumber of these points. First of all, France does not want to go back to a fixedexchange rate system. It would be a contradiction towant to bring back a fixed exchange rate system whenwe criticise the euro's volatility for not correspondingto economic realities. Fixed exchange rate systems characteristically do notadapt to the realities of the economy. France does notwant to challenge the dollar, which plays an eminentrole and should be a strong currency, as PresidentObama so often says. And France does not supportadditional capital controls. Those are thefundamentals. Yet having refused these three things,is there a single person in the world who could say thatthe international monetary system works well or thatthere's no problem?We do not want to address these questions from anideological angle, but from a pragmatic one. Ourambition is to agree with our partners on concreteproposals. Our position is simple. It can be summed upG8 MEMBER COUNTRIES019?

in one sentence: the emergence of new economicpowers will inevitably lead to the emergence of newinternational currencies. There is no escaping this fact. The transition under way could be a factor of instability.We therefore have a prime objective: improve our co-operation in order to support growth. And to do this, wewill try to get everyone to agree on the indicatorsrequired to analyse persistent imbalances. Beforetackling the imbalances, France will try to get everyoneto agree on the definition of the indicators required tomeasure these imbalances. It is fascinating! Everyonecriticises their imbalances, but there are no rules, nocriteria to define what an imbalance is or what asurplus is. So this will be our first, and extremely important, job. Ihope that, with the ministers and governors, we willstart finding answers in February. Each country willthen be asked to present economic policy actions andstructural reforms to reduce these imbalances.We also need to answer some very difficult questions.How can we reduce the need to accumulate reserves?Obviously, when countries see their capital drain awayin the space of a few days, they try to guard against thisrisk by considerably raising their reserves on the basisthat: "If there is a problem, I will have reserves." Yet this accumulation of unproductive reserves weighsextremely heavily. It is an expensive strategy. We needto make more headway with creating new IMFfacilities, as the IMF has also tried to do. But how can we improve the way we handle the systemic nature of certain crises that affect an entire region andcall not for a national response, but a global,multilateral response?HOW CAN INTERNATIONAL CAPITALFLOWS BE BETTER REGULATED? The current framework is outdated. The multitude ofrecent unilateral measures raises the question of theestablishment of multilateral rules. We will proposethat the G20 draw up a code of conduct for themanagement of capital flows. Ultimately, Francebelieves that a reform of the IMF's Articles ofAgreement would make common rules prevail and theIMF exercise its supervision in this area. You see, weset criteria that define the imbalances, we ask the IMFto analyse these criteria, supervise the application ofthese criteria, and we try to get everyone to complywith these criteria.Lastly, how do we make the transition to theinternationalisation of the new currencies? The SDR, ifmy memory serves me correctly, was created 42 yearsago. Forty-two years after the creation of the SDR, canwe agree on when and how to extend the SDR to new020G8 MEMBER COUNTRIESPhoto: © European Union, 2011