G7

Brief history • because of the oil and financial crisis • heads of state and government of the six leading industrial countries met in 1975 for the first time to discuss the global economy • joined in 1976 by Canada and in 1998 by Russia • G7 nations decided in March 2014 to meet without Russia until further notice • France, West Germany, the USA, Japan, the United Kingdom and Italy discussed the oil shock, the financial crisis and the ways out of recession • result of the huge economic problems facing the world in the 1970s. • 1980s the G7 extended its interests to embrace foreign and security policy issues • International challenges at that time included the long-standing conflict between Iran and Iraq and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan