"The fall of the Berlin Wall was indeed a turning point in globalisation, the end of the Cold War led to an unprecedented era of economic openness," Lamy said in a speech at Bocconi University in Milan, northern Italy.

"And 20 years later the world is in a state of serious distress," he added, citing the "worst economic crisis", global warming and nuclear proliferation.

"Global challenges need global solutions and these can only come with the right global governance which today, 20 years later, remains too weak," he said.

"The global economic crisis... has accelerated towards a sort of new architecture of global governance which I called a triangle of coherence," he said.

This triangle is composed of the G20 group of wealthy and emerging economies as well as international agencies which report to what Lamy called the "parliament" of the United Nations.

Lamy said that "among the many regional integration attempts, the European Union remains the laboratory of international governance."

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