The Group of Eight (G8) is an economic and political organization designed to bring about discussion and effect change among the world's most powerful nations. It includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Although the leaders of these countries keep in touch to varying degrees anyway, they meet as the G8 summit once a year in order to discuss the state of world economics and politics.
The group has a nominal presidency, and the holder of that office is different every year, with the post rotating throughout the membership, so that the leader of one country is also the G8 president for a year. The organization has no headquarters, budget, or permanent staff. The country that holds the presidency is the host country for the summit of that year and has the responsibility for paying for all costs associated with it. In recent years, security has required a hefty price tag.
The summit usually takes place in the middle of the calendar year, and it consists of three days of sometimes intense, very high-level talks between all eight leaders. Meetings between lower-level officials take place at various times leading up to the high-level summit. Topics of discussion at G8 summits have historically included controversial issues, such as global warming, Third World debt, Middle East peace, economic policy and conversation, and terrorism. Protests of one or more countries' policies usually accompany the summits. Sometimes, these protests get more coverage than the summits themselves.
Economic policy and conversation is at the root of the G8. The mid-1970s oil crisis shook the economics of the world's largest countries, and at the urging of then-French President Valery Giscard D'Estaing, the leaders of all the current members of the G8, except Canada and Russia, met to discuss how to respond to the oil crisis. This was in 1975, and the group's original name was the Library Group. It was soon changed to G6.
Canada joined the group the very next year, making it the G7. Russia joined in 1991, after the fall of communism in that country. The fall of communism in Germany also meant that the official delegation from that country was all-inclusive, not just representing West Germany, as had been the case when the Library Group first convened.