ABSTRACT
New structures and organisations – especially those which are created in an ad hoc, voluntaristic fashion by an elite club – automatically become a cause for concern, in particular for those who are excluded and for older organisations which see them as a threat to their domaine reservé. The annual economic summits of the seven major industrial democracies were (and to a certain extent still are) perceived by non-participating Western countries and the European Community as a possible threat to their role as decision-makers in world and European economic affairs. The circumstances surrounding the first summit gathering reinforced suspicions that the heads of government of the largest EC member states would take decisions without sufficiently consulting with their partners. The summits of the Seven were supposed to be highly confidential with a flexible agenda that could include any relevant international issue (and the original conception of just an exchange of views raised additional doubts). Without a defined relationship with existing bodies like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Monetary Fund and the European Community, in particular, the Western summits were viewed by many as necessary in principle but a threat and disturbance in practice. Would this new body not dominate all other set-ups and lead de facto to a sort of ‘directorate’ of the most powerful? Was it not the Gaullist vision reformulated in new terms; a practice that would undermine the principle of equal participation of all countries of the Western world?
