Genoa Economic and Financial Conference (1922)

The Economic and Financial Conference was a formal conclave of representatives from 34 European countries held in the ancient Palazzo San Giorgio of Genoa, Italy, from 10 April to 19 May 1922.

Unlike the previous international economic conference in Brussels (1920), the Genoa conference was attended by heads of government and not only experts, which enhanced its authority but also the risks of politicization and grandstanding, at a time of contention on the unresolved issue of German war reparations.

The conference was intended by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George to resolve the major economic and political issues facing Europe and to address the pariah status of Germany and the Soviet Union, both of which had been excluded from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The conference was particularly intended to develop a strategy to rebuild a defeated Germany, as well as the states of both Central Europe and Eastern Europe, and to negotiate a relationship between European capitalist economies and the Bolshevik regime in Moscow. Germany and the Soviet Union predictably expressed loud dissent and stole the limelight by negotiating a separate bilateral agreement on the conference's sidelines, the Treaty of Rapallo.

Even so, the conference further cemented the policy consensus on principles formed at the Brussels gathering two years before. The Economic and Financial Organization of the League of Nations (EFO) presented a report to the conference, which provided the first official articulation of the gold exchange standard, and also tackled novel fields for international financial cooperation such as capital flight, tax evasion, and double taxation. The conference also found agreement on the principle that financial stability must come first before trade restrictions could be beneficially lifted, even though no convergence was achieved on trade liberalization measures as the EFO had recommended.

Background

The idea for a general economic and financial conference of European nations had roots in a January 1922 session of the Supreme War Council, held in Cannes. With Europe facing an economic catastrophe brought about by the half-decade First World War, marked by millions of deaths, shattered infrastructure and vast sums of squandered economic resources, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George sought an authoritative international gathering to set Europe's political and financial house in order and to establish his leadership firmly at home.