Explanation - The G7 emerged as a restricted club of the rich democracies in the early 1970s. The quadrupling of oil prices just after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when members of OPEC imposed an embargo against Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States, shocked their economies. The then French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing invited the Finance Ministers of five of the most developed members of the OECD, the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, and the United Kingdom, for an informal discussion on global issues. This transformed into a G7 Summit of the heads of government from the following year, with the inclusion of Canada (1976), and the European Commission/Community (later Union) attending as a non-enumerated member, a year later. On the initiative of U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the G7 became the G8, with the Russian Federation joining the club in 1998. This ended with Russia's expulsion following the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Explanation - The G7 emerged as a restricted club of the rich democracies in the early 1970s. The quadrupling of oil prices just after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when members of OPEC imposed an embargo against Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States, shocked their economies. The then French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing invited the Finance Ministers of five of the most developed members of the OECD, the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, and the United Kingdom, for an informal discussion on global issues. This transformed into a G7 Summit of the heads of government from the following year, with the inclusion of Canada (1976), and the European Commission/Community (later Union) attending as a non-enumerated member, a year later. On the initiative of U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the G7 became the G8, with the Russian Federation joining the club in 1998. This ended with Russia's expulsion following the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
