The venue for the summit meeting was at the former official residence of the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn, the Palais Schaumburg.

[1] The Group of Seven (G7) was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada (since 1976),[2] and the President of the European Commission (starting officially in 1981).

[3] The summits were not meant to be linked formally with wider international institutions; and in fact, a mild rebellion against the stiff formality of other international meetings was a part of the genesis of cooperation between France's president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's chancellor Helmut Schmidt as they conceived the first Group of Six (G6) summit in 1975.

As a practical matter, the summit was also conceived as an opportunity for its members to give each other mutual encouragement in the face of difficult economic decisions.

[4] This was the first summit where rather than simply issuing joint statements, participants committed themselves to policy decisions.