Backgrounder: Key facts about G8 summit

The leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) are gathering at Lough Erne in Northern Ireland for the annual G8 Heads of State Summit on June 17 and 18. The following are some key facts about the summit: As the host country this year, Britain wants the G8 countries to agree advances in three key areas including trade, tax and transparency, in order to promote global economic growth. The leaders will also discuss how to tackle the threat of extremism and terrorist violence, the global economy and foreign policy. Conflict in Syria and the U.S. surveillance program are on the summit agenda as well. The G8, which evolved from the G7, consists of the world's eight leading industrialized nations: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and Russia. In November 1975, in the wake of the worst global economic crisis since World War II, leaders of France, the United States, the then West Germany, Japan, Britain and Italy gathered in France for their first economic summit to discuss the global economic situation and coordinate policies to reinvigorate their economies. The group of the six developed countries welcomed Canada as the club's seventh member at the second summit held in San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico in June 1976, thus G7 came into being. Since then, G7 members held the summit annually hosted by a rotating presidency. In July 1991, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev was invited to hold talks with the G7 leaders following the close of the summit in London. The participation on Russia's part continued in this way till Russia was finally granted the right to join discussions on political issues in 1994, forming the "7+1" mechanism. The G7 summit became a G8 event in Denver of the United States in June 1997, when then Russian President Boris Yeltsin was invited to fully participate in the summit, and the final communique was issued in the name of the eight leaders for the first time, implying the G8's replacement of the "7+1" mechanism. In the following year, Russia became an official member of G8. It gained the right in 2002 to host the 2006 summit. However, Russia's participation has long been limited to political issues and the G7 system remains in existence. Traditionally, the summit mainly concerned economic issues and the coordination of macroeconomic policies of member states. However, political issues were put on the agenda in the late 1980s. Discussions during the annual summit now cover economy, politics, security and poverty alleviation.