Gordon Brown last night urged EU leaders to back an audacious plan for a new system of world economic government in which the G20 and IMF would be empowered to tell major economies how they should tailor their national policies to secure sustainable international growth.
Brown outlined his plan to EU leaders at a dinner in Brussels where an agreed strategy, including the governance of executive bonuses, was being hammered out ahead of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh next week.
The Brown proposal, known as the global compact is his latest attempt to urge world leaders, to recognise that international co-ordination of the major economies' fiscal policies is essential to prevent a repetition of the disastrous global slump. He also hopes the plan will help underscore his reputation as a respected world leader on economic issues.
Brown's plan appears to sanction new intrusions by a permanent G20 secretariat into the individual nation states. It is, though, seen by him as a way of addressing the global imbalances, including the surpluses and deficits of different nations, that have lain at the heart of last year's crisis.
