The article addresses the G20 compliance with its long-standing commitment to refrain from protectionist measures which was first adopted by the G20 leaders at their inaugural meeting in Washington in 2008. The paper attempts to measure and compare the results of individual G20 members in different timeframes between the summits. The analysis is based on the data from the WTO reports on the G20 trade and trade-related measures.

Despite the commitment, however, the G20 members did not slow down the pace of protectionism. Thus, the effectiveness of the G20 in this field of cooperation remains low, which is substantiated by a large number of measures adopted by the G20 members in the period between Washington summit in 2008 and Cannes summit in 2011. On the other hand, the WTO reports on the G20 trade and trade-related measures, prepared at the request of the G20 leaders, proved to be an effective monitoring tool to assess the scale of the G20 members’ compliance.

The publication is prepared within the framework of a joint project "Enhancing Effectiveness of Russia’s Participation in G8, G20 and BRICS in Compliance with the Russian Federation National Priorities in Global Governance and Developing Recommendations for the Russian Presidency of G20 in 2013" implementing by Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and International Organisations Research Institute (IORI) of the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” in 2012.