SUBSIDIES STEP 3: EVALUATE SUBSIDIES RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE G-20

industrialized and developing economies made a groundbreaking commitment to reform their fossil-fuel subsidies, in a bid to advance their energy security and climate change agendas (G-20 Leaders, 2009). In doing so, leaders called upon their finance and energy ministers to prepare implementation plans and timelines and asked international organizations to prepare an analytical background paper; both are to report back to the next Leaders ’ Summit, to be held 26–27 June 2010, in Toronto, Canada. The concept of subsidy can be rather murky and the reform process can easily become bogged down in the attempt to find a suitable definition. As part of their efforts to progress fossil-fuel subsidy reform, G-20 energy and finance officials, along with the international community, have revived a debate to agree on a definition of “subsidy. ” This is by no means a new debate— subsidies have been negotiated multilaterally since the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). But because the very nature of subsidies goes to the heart of sensitive issues such as government spending