Group of Seven (G7)

The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental forum of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, with the European Union taking part as a non-enumerated member. It grew out of an informal March 1973 gathering of finance ministers from major industrialized economies convened during the oil crisis, known afterward as the Library Group. The leaders themselves first met at France's November 1975 Rambouillet summit as a Group of Six, and Canada's addition at the following year's summit made it the Group of Seven. Russia was admitted in 1998, enlarging the forum into the Group of Eight (G8), before its membership was suspended in March 2014 following the annexation of Crimea, returning the forum to the G7. The G7 has no treaty, no secretariat and no independent legal personality; each year's rotating host chairs its agenda and summit, and its communiques bind members only through political commitment rather than international law, a structure political scientists cite on both sides of the debate over whether informal-forum governance can substitute for treaty-based international institutions.