Big Four (Western Europe)

The Big Four, also known as the E4 or G4, refers to France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. France and the United Kingdom are official nuclear-weapon states and are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The United Kingdom is the only country of the Big Four which is not a member state of the European Union, having ended its membership in 2020, pursuant to a referendum held in 2016. France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom are considered major European powers and they are the Western European countries individually represented as full members of the G7 and the G20. They have been referred to as the "Big Four of Europe" since the interwar period.

The term G4 was used for the first time when French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a meeting in Paris with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to consider the response to the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development describes them as the "Four Big European Countries".

Issues

The leaders of the four countries usually have a series of joint video conference calls with the US president (see NATO Quint), or with other leaders, on international issues. With US President Barack Obama, for example, they discussed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the Syrian civil war and the use of chemical weapons during the conflict, the Russian annexation of Crimea and international sanctions against Russia, the post-civil war violence in Libya, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the 2014 American intervention in Iraq and the Ebola virus disease. With Russian President Vladimir Putin, they discussed, for example, the Vienna peace talks for Syria.