French President Emmanuel Macron appears to have had two goals for France’s Evian G7 summit which concluded on 17 June. First, to facilitate a constructive dialogue between President Donald Trump and the G7’s other members (or ‘G6’) on a limited number of issues. And second, to strengthen cooperation between the G7 as a whole and leading emerging economies.
In the event, he achieved both these goals. In contrast to last year’s Kananaskis Summit, Trump did not leave early. There were no public spats of the kind that marred the 2018 Canadian G7 summit. And the guest countries attending – Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya and the Republic of Korea – took part in at least half the sessions, explicitly endorsing some of the policy statements.
But Evian also shows the limits of what can be achieved at the G7 with President Trump in the US chair. A new format is urgently needed to address pressing global challenges.
Main outcomes
Arguably France’s biggest success was that Trump joined the opening session with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump signed up to a statement which reaffirmed the G7’s ‘unwavering support’ for Ukraine, committed to increase the supply of air defence systems, and promised to strengthen sanctions against Russia, including on its oil and gas sector.
The G6 supported Trump’s agreement to end its war with Iran, despite the memorandum of understanding’s vagueness and critical unresolved issues. And they avoided repeating their criticism of the decision to launch the war. In return the US gave a qualified endorsement of a UK–France naval initiative designed to assist a resumption of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
The summit also produced statements on several French economic priorities, although these were often constrained by US ‘America first’ positions.
A summit declaration recognized the risk from growing macroeconomic imbalances, a key factor underpinning the global financial crisis of 2007-9. However, no specific offer was made to try and persuade China, the other essential player, to help address these imbalances.
Nor did G7 countries make their own domestic policy proposals to help address the problem – a particular issue for the US, with respect to its burgeoning fiscal deficit. There was only a bland statement that ‘countries with large and persistent external deficits should undertake policies that include supporting domestic savings and fiscal consolidation’ and a commitment to continue discussions in the G20.
Another declaration promoted collective approaches by the G7 and its allies in responding to China’s dominance of critical minerals supply. This contrasted with the strongly bilateral approach that characterized a US-hosted critical minerals ministerial in February. The G7 statement set out high level goals on industrial cooperation, market structure, transparency, stockpiling and recycling. It also announced a non-binding G7 Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance.
A statement on creating a safe digital space for children and youth focused, for the most part, on calls for the digital technology industry to take (essentially voluntary) action to protect young people from online harms. G7 leaders also requested that finance ministers and central bank governors further ‘discuss’ emerging opportunities and potential risks arising from artificial intelligence, including in the financial sector.
But the urgent need for stronger public guardrails on AI development generally – and the desire of many countries to establish sovereignty over the way digital products developed by the US and China are used in their jurisdictions – were not addressed. The apparent support of the CEOs of Open AI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind for enhanced G7 cooperation and equitable access to AI products would, however, have been welcome to the G6 and partner countries.
A further statement reiterated the importance of development finance while calling for reform of the way it is delivered.
How did France do it?
To deliver these outcomes France refined the approach adopted by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney for the Kananaskis G7 Summit in 2025.
To try and ensure President Trump’s attendance, President Macron moved the summit date – avoiding a clash with the president’s birthday celebrations on 14 June.
The agenda was structured to avoid all subjects where the US would not engage or where its position was likely to be unacceptable to G6 countries – such as climate change, the future of the world trading system, maintaining monetary and financial stability and the need for broad-based digital technology governance. And France invited Kenya to the summit rather than South Africa, after Trump threatened to boycott the summit if South Africa attended.
France was also helped by the timing of the US ceasefire agreement with Iran. Trump’s poor domestic poll ratings, the approaching midterm elections, and the Supreme Court’s restrictions on his ability to deploy tariff hikes at will may also have contributed to the US president’s relatively constructive approach to the summit.
Meanwhile France deepened the involvement of guest, or ‘partner’, countries. They were invited to send representatives to preparatory sherpa meetings. And the summit outcomes were structured around nine declarations, allowing partners to choose which to back. In the event, all partners endorsed the statement on creating a safe digital space for young people, while support for the other G7 statements varied.
The limits of today’s G7
France achieved as much as might reasonably have been expected from this summit. But the flaws in the G7 format with President Trump representing the US were again highlighted in Evian.
That weakness is not about the reduced size of the G7 economies relative to the world economy – the group is still large enough in economic terms and has the technological and financial capabilities to be highly influential. But it can only wield its influence if members share core values, trust each other sufficiently and there are no policy areas which are barred from discussion.
None of these conditions have held since President Trump started his second term. As a result, many of the most important issues facing the world economy today are excluded from the group’s agenda.