
Prime Minister David Cameron will host the 2013 G8 Summit in Lough Erne from June 17-18.
Official site of the UK Presidency of G8 2013
The Group of Eight (G8) is a forum for the leaders of eight of the world’s most industrialized nations, aimed at finding common ground on key topics and solutions to global issues. The G8 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. While the leaders of these countries are in regular contact, they meet in summit format as the G8 once a year.
The G8’s origin stems from meetings held in the 1970s between France’s Valéry Giscard D’Estaing and Germany’s Helmut Schmidt when they were finance ministers. Each subsequently assumed the leadership of their respective countries, just as the mid-1970s oil crisis was buffeting the world’s largest economies. French President Giscard D’Estaing urged the leaders of Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States to meet in 1975 to discuss how to respond to the oil crisis.