2021. vol. 16. No. 2

This article studies the work carried out by the Group of 20 (G20) between the global crises of 2008¬–09 and 2020. Active G20 efforts to ensure financial stability and control imbalances helped to mitigate vulnerabilities to crises of the 2008–09 type. Other key achievements included the transition of several G20 members to market-determined exchange rates and the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information as a part of the effort to combat base erosion and profit shifting. However, the G20 proved unprepared for the 2020 crisis, even though G20 leaders had noted the risks linked to infectious diseases in 2015. During the period between the crises, the G20 failed to establish an effective system for analyzing global risks. Indeed, its analysis was mainly adaptive as opposed to forward-looking; no mechanism was formed for controlling policies to manage risks. G20 members’ involvement in the analysis was inadequate, reflecting the consistent pattern of lower incentives for cooperation in the context of comparatively benign global economic conjunctures. Currently, however, the importance of managing global systemic risks is obvious and is reflected in the G20 Action Plan for supporting the global economy through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some scholars of global governance advocate rebalancing from global to national governance. They underline the incompatibility of global economic governance with democracies, which have the right to protect their social arrangements. They discern the fact that global (economic) governance is under heavy fire from a new vox populi, underscoring the socio-economic and cultural sources of their resentment and opposition to the liberal international order. While pointing at the timeliness of such argumentation, this article examines the fundamental problem with a sovereignty-related solution to the populist challenge. It lies in the fact that reconstituting global economic steering with a stronger emphasis on sovereignty may open the door for pursuing distinct national policies, which have blossomed during the Covid-19 pandemic and which not only overlap with populism but dismantle the benefits of international cooperation in the post-Covid-19 world. By asking about the role of the fragmented system of economic governance in inspiring populist resentment, this article creates an opportunity not only to address the challenges to global economic governance, but more specifically to reflect upon: the justification of decisive shifts toward national governance; risks which remain hidden for those discontented with economic globalization; and drafting an alternative solution, namely taking the middle way between hyper globalization and a more national policy.

In the last decades, the importance of trade in services in global trade flows has grown from strength to strength. This trend has stimulated the proliferation of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements aimed at ensuring equal and fair access for service providers to foreign markets. The states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) are no exceptions to this global trend and strive to ensure free trade in services with foreign partners as a part of trade policies.

This article analyzes theoretical and practical aspects of implementing the provisions on trade in services of the free trade agreement (FTA) between the EAEU and Vietnam, specifically applied to Russia and Vietnam. The results of the agreement’s implementation are instrumental in formulating the main contributions of the strategy that will increase the efficiency of future agreements on trade in services between the EAEU and foreign partners. The following strategy has already been applied to the example of service sector cooperation between Russia and Singapore. The emphasis of the study is quite universal, and the contributions of the strategy are applicable to other regional associations.

The European Green Deal is a plan to decarbonise the EU economy by 2050, revolutionise the EU’s energy system, profoundly transform the economy and inspire efforts to combat climate change. But the plan will also have profound geopolitical repercussions. The Green Deal will affect geopolitics through its impact on the EU energy balance and global markets; on oil and gas-producing countries in the EU neighbourhood; on European energy security; and on global trade patterns, notably via the carbon border adjustment mechanism. At least some of these changes are likely to impact partner countries adversely.