The UK’s Gordon Brown and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi set out on Thursday their respective agendas for the G20 and G8 summits they will host over the next five months, with each prime minister stressing the importance of both institutions without overshadowing the other.

Amid the rhetoric of global deals, bargains and collective solutions expressed at their joint press conference in Rome, Mr Berlusconi admitted that world leaders so far had not decided what to do in practice and were still “very far from a satisfactory solution”.