Global leaders are assembling in Paris for the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, popularly known as the Macron Summit. According to Catherine Colonna, France’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the goal is to build a new financial contract between the Global North and Global South.
Among the summit’s concrete objectives will be to enhance fragile economies’ access to the finance needed to cope with higher food and energy prices, the green transition and development challenges. A key issue is to ensure that this renewed financial access does not create more problems than it solves.
It is appropriate that the Macron Summit is in Paris, because France provides a cautionary tale in this respect. In 1947, when post-World War II France was still financially and economically vulnerable, it became the first country to receive a World Bank loan. The Bank awarded it $250 million “pour faciliter la reparation des dommages causes par la guerre.”
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