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Analytical Studies > Analysis on the 2026 Evian Summit
G7 Summits > 2026 Evian Summit > Road to the 2026 Evian Summit

The G7 Evian Summit’s Strong Performance: Full Assessment

John Kirton, G7 Research Group
July 29, 2026
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The 52nd annual G7 summit was held in Evian, France, from June 15 to 17, 2026. Most G7 leaders there were veterans of G7 summits. Emmanuel Macron, the host, was at his tenth summit, since becoming French president in May 2017, and was hosting his second summit, after Biarritz in 2019. He again welcomed US president Donald Trump, coming to his sixth summit, including Biarritz, and his second during his return to the presidency in January 2025. EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was at her sixth, and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni at her third, since she started as host of Apulia in 2024. Coming to their second summit were the newcomers at Kananaskis in 2025: Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, the 2025 host; German chancellor Friedrich Merz; EU Council president António Costa; and UK prime minister Keir Starmer, with the leader of the UK due to host in 2027. Japanese prime minister Takaichi Sanae was at her first summit. Thus, there was only one newcomer at Evian, with most leaders there having tackled Trump before in this unique club. (See Kirton and Koch 2026.)

The invited guests and partners who attended were the leaders of Korea, India, Brazil, Egypt, Kenya and the United Arab Emirates.

Schools of Thought

After the Evian Summit ended, its performance was assessed differently by several schools of thought.

The first school, focused on the leaders’ deliberation and decision making, saw expanded cooperation due to the “increasingly interconnected global challenges” addressed by the G7 at Evian (Nine O’Clock Online 2026). The summit “covering global security, economic resilience, public health, migration, online safety and international development cooperation,” which reflected “the G7’s intention to expand its focus beyond traditional economic coordination and position itself as a platform for addressing a broad spectrum of global challenges, ranging from security and health to technology governance and sustainable development.”

The second school, focused on domestic political management through photo ops, saw awkward moments, largely due to Trump, who drew most of the attention (Hutchings 2026; Tanden 2026). Arriving at the final morning session, he announced to the assembled leaders that “I’m the boss.” He snubbed Starmer by not holding a bilateral meeting with him and, had Meloni speaking pointedly to and then turning her back on him. Trump also walked the wrong way at the end of the family photo and held Bridgette Macron’s hand too long and too often.

The third school, focused on delivery, saw “the president is right” in claiming that the stock market soared, as Trump claimed, because of what he did at Evian on his peace deal with Iran (Martin 2026). Players in many other markets also trusted the cooperative moves that Trump made on security and tariffs.

The fourth school, focused on decision making, saw only a pep talk and “slow hand clap” (Keynes 2026). Soumaya Keynes (2026) concluded “instead of seizing your big opportunities to be bold on an international stage, you were utterly predictable. President Emmanuel Macron tried to make the G7 summit about solving macroeconomic imbalances, the Chinese demurred, the Americans disengaged, and the topic got kicked to the G20.” Thus, economic imbalances kept expanding, the EU moved toward a trade fight, and economic crisis loomed.

The fifth school saw G7 composure regained due to “a more tempered Trump,” while questions remained about the G7’s long-term future as a united club remained (CE NoticiasFinancieras, 2026). It strongly supported Ukraine and broadened the group by including Brazil, India, Korea, Kenya and several Gulf countries, but did not secure Trump’s support for strong actions against China’s subsidized exports.

The sixth school saw the G7 manage “to preserve a degree of unity as members confronted shared and urgent challenges” on energy and critical minerals, Trump stayed throughout and several statements and commitments were agreed” (Pajon 2026). However, this meant deferring to Trump by avoiding discussing climate change and free trade and Macron inviting him to dinner at Versailles at the end of the summit’s last day.

The seventh school saw a major pivot to a better energy policy “driven by the severe energy and commodity shocks stemming from the conflict in the Middle East – specifically transit disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz” (Jayaraj 2026). This led Evian’s leaders to overwhelmingly prioritize energy security over “aggressive timelines for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” endorse Canada’s potential as a major oil and gas producer and follow the US model.

The eighth school saw Evian showing the G7 competing with China to define global governance, in its policy choices and narratives, with Evian statements driven by “concerns over persistent global imbalances, non-market policies, structural overcapacity and cross-border spillovers – which reflected a wider debate over China’s growth model and industrial policy” (Nan 2026). Yet the G7 used institutional and managerial, called for reducing vulnerability rather than separation, and sought to speak for developing countries and coordinate through the G20.

The ninth school saw advances on a narrow range of issues closely aligned with Trump’s priorities, due to the other G7 leaders’ desire to adapt the institution to Trump’s style of diplomacy. Thus Trump stayed for the full summit and adopted a cordial, cooperative tone, and the summit featured bilateral and small group meetings and several statements focused on his priorities, rather than “a single wide-ranging communique addressing the full spectrum of G7 priorities” (Tiritilli 2026). This means future summits could function less as forums for multilateral governance and collective problem solving, and “become opportunities for presidential spectacle and domestic political messaging.”

The tenth school saw Evian make the G7 “less an exclusive club than an important convening power,” due to its need for the capabilities of guests such as the United Arab Emirates and the CEOs of the leading tech firms to address the critical issues of the day (Hathi 2026). This was true for the immediate shock of the US-Iran war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the broader issue of advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

The Argument

But a systematic analysis of the evidence shows that at their Evian Summit on June 15-17, 2026, G7 leaders produced a strong performance, making important advances on the key security, economic, social and technology issues they addressed. This strong performance was propelled by strong shock-activated vulnerability, very strong multilateral organizational failure in response, the significant globally predominant, internally equalizing capability of G7 members, their significantly contracting common and converging principles and practices due to Trump’s divergence, their largely low and very mixed domestic political support, and the very high value the leaders hold for their G7 club at the centre of a growing network of global summit governance.

Key Achievements

On security, G7 leaders strongly supported Trump’s page-and-a-half, 14-point deal with Iran on the summit’s eve, agreeing on an immediate ceasefire with Iran and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. G7 leaders promised to help ensure the deal was kept by providing military and financial support. On Ukraine they promised much stronger military supplies for Ukraine and further sanctions on Russia, to hasten the day when Russia would agree to a ceasefire before more Russian troops, assets, infrastructure and Ukrainian territory were lost. And in the Indo-Pacific region, they promised to keep the East and South China Seas and Taiwan Strait open, enforce United Nations sanctions against North Korea, and support the virtual Global Convergence for Growth Summit among G7 members and China, which took place a few days before the Evian Summit’s start.

On the economy and development, they also promised more financial support for struggling developing countries by mobilizing money from the private sector and the many multilateral and regional development banks that G7 members controlled.

On social issues, they acted swiftly and strongly against the new deadly Ebola outbreak in Africa, including by mobilizing more of their own money, supporting the UN, and having the US convene a G20 foreign ministers meeting to do more to stop this public health emergency. They and all their invited partners of India, Brazil, Korea, Kenya and Egypt promised to accelerate their efforts against cancer. They further promised to act aggressively against drug smuggling and migrant smuggling.

On technology, after their final session held with the heads of major artificial intelligence firms, they promised to protect their children and youth from the AI-intensified harms and threats their social media and internet produce, by having all public and private players contribute to this cause.

Yet preventing a very strong performance was their failure to do anything directly against the existential threat of climate change and rising heat and extreme weather events it produced.

Dimensions of Performance

This strong performance is confirmed by the results on the six key dimensions of performance, by which the work of all such plurilateral summit institutions can be assessed (see Appendix A).

Domestic Political Management

The first dimension is domestic political management, as leaders go abroad to these high-profile summits to enhance support for their country’s standing and for their own policies and political position back home.

On the first and essential indicator – attendance at the summit – all nine G7 leaders attended, maintaining the G7 summit’s perfect attendance record for its 52nd year. All G7 leaders stayed for the full three days and participated in all the sessions among themselves, those with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with their partners and guests, and with the AI CEOs they invited to the final session on the last day. Trump did arrive late for the first session on the final day.

On the second indicator – the compliments they gave themselves in their communiqués – Evian’s nine outcome documents contained 19 compliments to six members. They were led by those to the US, followed host France, Japan, the EU, Italy and Canada. Evian’s 19 compliments were more than four times as many than the average of four for the previous 51 summits. Evian’s leaders also gave their partners and guests at least four compliments, with one each to the World Bank Group, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, African Development Bank and African partners.

Deliberation

The second performance dimension is the deliberation among G7 leaders, in both its private, personal form, and in its public form encoded in the outcome documents they release.

In 2026, G7 leaders’ private deliberations, by themselves and with their chosen guests, took place over three days, starting in Evian on June 15 and with an innovative dinner between Macron and Trump at the Palace of Versailles in Paaris on the evening of June 17. This unusually long period allowed many bilateral or small group meetings between G7 leaders to take place.

In their public deliberation, as measured by their collective outcome documents, as intended by the French host, Evian’s G7 leaders issued nine, with all agreed by all nine leaders. They added no chair’s summary. The nine documents contained 9,161 words. They were led by the documents on critical minerals with 1,840 words, followed by those on international partnerships with 1,369, growth 1,299, the safety of minors 1,011, drug trafficking 999, Ebola 824, geopolitical issues 725, cancer 713 and migrant smuggling 381.

Evian’s nine documents were almost double the summit average of five communiqués for the previous 51 summits. Evian’s 9,161 words were almost as high as the G7 average of 10,842 words for the previous summits. They were more than the 6,140 words in the nine documents issued at the Kananaskis Summit in 2025, but about half the 19,795 words in the only document issued at the Apulia Summit in 2024, where Joe Biden represented the US.

Direction Setting

The third performance dimension is G7 leaders’ collective, public, direction setting of principles and norms, with principles being statement of fact, causation and rectitude and norms being statements of what should, should not and could be done.

On the first measure – affirmations of the G7’s distinctive foundational principles of open democracy and individual liberty – Evian’s leaders produced four. Open democracy received one and human rights three.

Evian’s total of four for both was just over one tenth of the average of 33 affirmations at each of the previous summits and one fifth of the 20 from Kananaskis in 2025.

Decision-Making Commitments

The fourth dimension is decision making, as leaders make public, collective, precise, future-oriented, politically binding commitments.

Evian’s nine outcome documents contained 172 commitments, with all agreed to by all leaders, including Trump (see Appendix B). Most were supported by all or some of their partners and guests (see Appendix C).

The G7 leaders’ documents were released in three batches. Among the first three documents, released on the afternoon of June 16, was the “Leaders’ Declaration: Mutually Beneficial International Partnerships,” addressing the subject of the French presidency’s second priority for the summit. It contained 33 commitments, all on the G7’s historically central subject of development. Almost half these commitments – 15 – were ambitious ones.

Their second document, released at the same time, was the “Leaders Call on the Fight Against Cancer.” It contained 18 commitments, all on health. Eleven were ambitious. All 18 were supported by India, Brazil, Korea, Kenya and Egypt.

Their third document, released in the afternoon, was the “Leaders for a Coordinated Response to the Bundibugyo Ebola Outbreak.” It contained 11 commitments, all on health. Six were ambitious. The 11 commitments were supported by India, Korea, Kenya and Egypt. Those leaders and the G7 leaders responded here to the familiar shock of a new outbreak of a more difficult variant of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which G7 leaders had first addressed in 2015.

The next three documents arrived around midnight on June 16.

The fourth document was the “G7 Leaders’ Statement on Geopolitical Issues.” It dealt in turn with Ukraine in four paragraphs, the Middle East in seven paragraphs (on Iran, Lebanon and Gaza) and the Indo-Pacific region in three paragraphs (on the South and East China Seas and Taiwan Strait, North Korea and the Global Convergence for Growth Summit). This statement contained 19 commitments, all on regional security, with Ukraine having seven, the Middle East seven and the Indo-Pacific five.

The fifth document was the “Leaders’ Declaration on Tackling Migrant Smuggling.” Supported by Korea and Kenya, its seven paragraphs contained seven commitments, with three ambitious ones.

The sixth document in the second batch was the “Leaders’ Declaration on the Fight Against Drug Smuggling.” Supported by Brazil and Korea, it contained 16 paragraphs with 28 commitments. Nineteen were ambitious.

The last three documents were published at the end of the summit on June 18.

The seventh document was the “Leaders’ Statement for a More Balanced, Durable and Resilient Growth.” Supported by Korea, Kenya and Egypt, its 16 commitments contained seven ambitious ones.

The eighth document was the “G7 Leaders’ Declaration on Securing Supply Chains for Critical Minerals.” Supported by Australia as a partner, although it was not represented at the Evian Summit, it had 30 commitments, with 22 ambitious ones.

The ninth document was the “Leaders’ Call on A Safer Digital Space for Minors.” Supported by all five guest leaders, its 10 commitments included six ambitious ones.

Evian’s nine communiqués were the same number as the 2025 Kananaskis Summit, which had produced eight statements plus a chair’s summary.

Evian’s 172 commitments were substantially more than the average of 154 commitments produced at each of the 51 previous summits, and the 150 produced at Kananaskis, and many more than the 71 produced by Macron’s G7 Biarritz Summit in 2019. Evian’s 172 commitments were exceeded at only 18 of the previous 51 summits.

The Evian documents’ 172 commitments were led by those on international partnerships with 33, and critical minerals with 30, followed by drug smuggling with 28, geopolitical issues with 19, cancer with 18, economic growth with 16, Ebola with 11, minors’ digital safety with 10 and migrant smuggling with 7. Surprisingly, for a summit designed to secure the strong cooperation of Trump, and which succeeded in doing so, its commitments were led by those on development with 33, and on health, with cancer and Ebola together having 29. Yet compared to the G7’s previous summit in 2025, there were few commitments on AI itself or quantum computing, and none on the natural environment, climate change or extreme weather events such as wildfires (Bitter 2026).

Eight documents – all except the one on geopolitical issues – contained 153, or 89% of Evian’s commitments, with explicit support from the G7’s guests or partners (see Appendix C). The guests and partners supported them 24 times, with cancer and minors’ digital safety having five supporters each, Ebola four, balanced growth three, and international partnerships, migrant smuggling and drug trafficking two each, and critical minerals one. The supporters were led by G20 members Korea for seven documents, India and Brazil for three each, and Australia for one, giving 14 G20 endorsements in all. Egypt supported four, joining India and Brazil, to give 10 endorsements from BRICS members.

Delivery

The fifth performance dimension is the members’ delivery of these decisions, through their government’s compliance with their leaders’ commitments before the next summit is held.

An immediate indication of what this compliance might be between Evian to the US-hosted G7 summit in 2027 comes from the insertion in the commitments of remit mandates, precise deadlines and authorized agents.

The Evian commitments contained 28 of these compliance catalysts. Specialized agents had 19 references, coming in all documents except cancer. They were led by those on partnerships, economic growth and critical minerals with four each. G7 ministers were tasked in seven commitments, and the G20 in four.

A precise deadline appeared in eight commitments, with five having a short-term deadline of one year or less and three having a multiyear deadline up to 2030.

There was only one remit mandate, on cancer, that the leaders gave themselves.

Development of Global Governance

The sixth performance dimension is the institutional development of governance, through references to bodies both inside and outside the G7.

Inside the G7, Evian’s leaders created three official-level bodies: The G7+ Ports Network to Combat Drug Trafficking, the Inventory of G7 Initiatives and Best Practices to Counter Drug and Precursor Chemical Trafficking in Ports, and the G7 platform for Critical Minerals Cooperation. They created no ministerial-level ones.

Evian’s leaders also made nine references to the G20, with international partnerships having five, growth two, and Ebola and geopolitical issues one each.

Institutions inside the G7 were referenced in G7 commitments 20 times, with seven different institutions identified (see Appendix D).

There were 18 references to institutions outside the G7-centric ones, with references to 12 outside bodies.

The G7 thus focused on institutionally developing itself, rather than bodies outside.

Propellors of Performance

The Evian Summit’s strong performance was propelled by strong shock-activated vulnerability, very strong multilateral organizational failure in response, the significant globally predominant, internally equalizing capability of G7 members, their significantly contracting common and converging principles and practices (due to Trump’s divergence), their largely low and very mixed domestic political support, and the very high value held by G7 leaders for their G7 club at the centre of a growing network of global summit governance.

Shock-Activated Vulnerability

The first propellor of Evian’s strong performance was the strong shock-activated vulnerability harming G7 members and their democratic partners’ countries in the first half of 2026.

The first shock erupted in full force on February 28, 2026, with the US attack, supported by Israel, on Iran. It came in a stronger and longer form that the one US and Israel had launched right after the Kananaskis Summit in June 2025. The February attack sparked an escalating conflict that by March 21 had spread to over a dozen countries, created an energy crisis in all G7 members and many others, and bringing serious fertilizer, food, inflationary and economic costs in its wake. Yet it was followed, on the eve of the Evian Summit, by a substantial, positive shock, when Trump announced a ceasefire and peace deal between the US and Iran.

The 2026 Iran shocks strongly caused Evian’s leaders to make four commitments on Iran, with two complimenting Trump for his peace deal. One of those commitments was ambitious: “We support and are ready to contribute to its implementation.” The diversionary shocks of the Iran war helped reduce Evian’s performance on Macron’s first initial priorities of global economic imbalances, with 16 commitments, but, surprisingly, not on his second initial priority of development partnerships, with its leading 33 commitments. But the Iran deal gave leaders the space to do more on regional security in Ukraine, with eight commitments, and the Indo-Pacific, with five.

The second shock, also on regional security, came from Ukraine, in a positive form. Although Russia’s assault and Ukraine’s response had escalated throughout the first half of 2026, by the Evian Summit’s eve, it was clear that the tide had turned in Ukraine’s favour, in the ratio of combatants killed and wounded, Ukrainian territory liberated or lost, and, above all, the frequency, distance and accuracy of Ukraine’s missile and drone strikes and their devastation of the energy and military infrastructure within Russia itself. This strongly caused the Evian leaders commitments on Ukraine, as Trump shifted his position to support Zelenskyy’s winning Ukrainian side, rather than Russian president Vladimir Putin’s losing one.

The third shock, now on health, came from the outbreak of a new Ebola epidemic, from a rare, unfamiliar Bundibugyo strain, which the World Health Organization (WHO) declared in May 17 to be an outbreak of international concern (Pilling 2026). This topic had not previously been on the Evian Summit’s agenda, but it strongly led G7 leaders there to produce 11 commitments in a separate statement on it. Six of those commitments, or 55%, were ambitious. More remarkably, Trump and his G7 colleagues pledged support for the UN in two of them: one for the UN in general and the other for the “humanitarian reset led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs” with its target “to reach 87 million people with lifesaving aid in 2026” – that is, in a short-term timetable of less than six months. Yet there was no support for, nor reference to, the WHO, from which Trump had already announced his decision to have the US leave this central multilateral organization for global health.

The fourth shock came in the digital domain. On June 12, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick placed export controls on Anthropic’s leading AI models, soon after the leading US firm discovered that its newest Mythos model could overcome the best cybersecurity defences of the US military, government, industry and citizens and those of its G7 partners too (Hammond and Miller 2026). This led Evian’s G7 leaders at their final session to have a vigorous private discussion with their invited industry CEOs. But they made no commitments on AI, beyond the 10 on the specific subject of minors’ safety, which Macron had put on the agenda months before. There was no advance from, or even reaffirmation of the 70 commitments made at the 2025 Kananaskis Summit on AI and, in a pioneering way, on quantum technology.

The fifth shock came 12 days before the summit, as a small, subsequent, but now quite familiar and thus expected one in trade. Trump unilaterally raised US tariffs on all G7 and more than 50 other countries, on the new grounds that their supply chains were supporting forced labour in China. This had prompted Brazil’s President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva to accept his invitation to the summit to make the case to Trump that this was a bad idea and to promote multilateralism, democracy and international institutions too. Yet the Evian leaders made no commitments on such tariffs or trade, beyond commitments relating to critical minerals supply chains, perhaps because G7 leaders believed that Trump would not agree to any and would soon change his mind on them.

The first two of these shocks – on the wars in Iran and Ukraine – confirmed the results of the Global Risks Report 2026, published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on January 14, 2026. The report had identified the top risks for 2026 as 1) geoeconomic confrontation (selected by 18% of respondents) and 2) state-based armed conflict (14%), followed well behind by 3) extreme weather events (8%), 4) societal polarization (7%), and 5) misinformation and disinformation (7%) (World Economic Forum 2026). These top five, taking 54% of the total, had coincided partially with Macron’s summit priorities, with geoeconomic confrontation covering macroeconomic balances, and state-based armed conflicts covering the wars in Europe and the Middle East, and possibly the Indo-Pacific and the western hemisphere. However, third-ranked extreme weather events and fifth-ranked misinformation and disinformation were absent from Macron’s declared priorities, and his priority of development was nowhere on WEF’s list. Macron’s first initial priority of the economy was supported by the WEF’s risks of 6) economic downturn (5%), 11) unemployment (2%), 16) asset bubble burst (2%), 17) debt (2%), 18) supply chain disruptions (1%) and 23) inflation (1%).

Moreover, there were few or no shocks to spur Evian’s 33 commitments on development, its 30 on critical minerals (apart from China’s recent export restrictions), 28 on drug trafficking, 18 on cancer and seven on migration. Shock-activated vulnerability thus propelled four of Evian’s nine documents and 56 of the commitments contained in them, for 33% of the 172 commitments the Evian leaders made.

Multilateral Organizational Response

The second propellor of Evian’s significant performance was the strong multilateral organizational failure in response to these shocks. This failure was driven by the retreat of the US and other G7 members from many central multilateral organizations, except for the UN, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the plurilateral, G7 centred Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and International Energy Agency (IEA). Badly weakened institutions included UN Climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Green Climate Fund and the WHO.

This strong multilateral organizational failure led Evian’s leaders to make few supportive references to them, beyond the two Bretton Woods bodies of the IMF and World Bank, which they controlled. There were only eight exceptions, each with one reference: the International Maritime Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UN Security Council, Interpol, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the UN Commission on Narcotics Drugs, and the International Narcotics Control Board.

In sharp contrast, they focused heavily on the Bretton Woods and G7-centric plurilateral bodies they controlled, the G20 or its foreign ministers, the OECD, the IEA, the European Coalition against Drugs, the European Ports Alliance, and the Conference on Critical Minerals and Materials.

Predominant, Equalizing Capability

Significantly propelling Evian’s strong performance was the mixed globally predominant, internally equalizing capability of G7 members. The war in Iran, closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Ukraine’s attacks on Russia enhanced G7 members’ predominance, as these primarily harmed the overall gross domestic product of energy-dependent, non-G7 members, led by China and India and by Saudi Arabia and Russia now less able to rely on their energy exports. However, these issues marginally reduced the equalizing capability within the G7, as the US and Canada had surplus fossil fuel energy, and Japan, Germany, Italy and the UK depended on fossil fuels, even if a nuclear-reliant France had a highly secure nuclear energy supply.

On the most critical military capabilities, the wars reinforced G7 predominance, as members’ military spending grew more strongly than that of China, and Russia’s material military capabilities declined. They also equalized within the G7. By the third week of the war in Iran, the US was asking its G7 partners to provide the naval capabilities, including minesweepers, that it lacked, to open the Strait of Hormuz. As the Evian Summit approached, US inventories of its required military weapons and oil in its strategic petroleum reserve were running low. In the Arctic theatre, where Russia threatened, Russia had the global lead on icebreakers, while Canada ranked second and the US had very few.

On the critical technological capability of AI, the G7’s global predominance was high, even if China was rapidly catching up to the US. The G7’s internal equalization was modest, as the US lead remained firm. This helped cause the Evian leaders to make no commitments on AI in general, while the US determined what its position on common G7 regulation of AI was, in response to the Mythos shock.

Converging Principles

Constraining Evian’s performance were the contracting common and converging principles of G7 members, led by Trump’s divergence from the core ones still shared by all the others. These core principles are devotion to democracy and human rights, especially as the G7’s distinctive foundational mission, proclaimed in its first summit communiqué at Rambouillet in 1975, was to preserve within its own members and promote globally open democracy and individual liberty. In 2026, the practice of democracy in the US and the preference of its president for it had both plunged but remained high in all other G7 members.

This accounts for the Evian Summit’s unusually low affirmations of the direction-setting principles of open democracy and human rights. Only 17 summits before had made fewer than the four affirmations that Evian produced.

Domestic Political Support

Further constraining Evian’s performance was G7 leaders’ largely low if very mixed domestic political support. It ranged from very low for Trump, Macron, Merz and Starmer to positive for Meloni and very high for Carney and Takaichi.

In the US, the most powerful member and host of the next G7 summit, Trump’s approval rating in January declined to a low level. An Economist/YouGov poll among US adults showed that by February 9, 2026, 57% disapproved of his performance, while only 40% approved, for a net rating of −17% (YouGov 2026a). The New York Times (2026) aggregated polls showed 56% disapproved and 40% approved on February 14. CNN’s Poll of Polls (2026) showed 59% disapproved and 39% approved on February 11. Both the Economist/YouGov and New York Times reported similar findings of around 44% approved and 54% disapproved in mid January; CNN’s findings were 57% disapproved and 39% approved on January 14. At the start of his presidential term, 50% had approved and 46% disapproved for a net rating of +4% (YouGov 2026a). By late March, driven by Trump’s war of choice against Iran on February 28, his approval rating remained among the lowest in US polling history – as low as 37% approval and 61% disapproval on March 30 according to CNN (2026) – and his Republican Party was due to lose control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate in the mid-term elections on November 3. This trend continued as the summit approached.

In France, the Evian Summit’s host, municipal elections in late March showed the mainstream parties, including Macron’s doing well against those on the far right and left, although the mainstream socialist party’s candidates won the Paris municipal election. However, Macron himself was a lame duck, as his presidential term will end in 2027. In January 2026, at 16% his approval rating was the lowest of the three G7 European leaders, although by April it had risen to 23% (Smith 2026a, 2026b).

In Germany, Merz’s CDU/CSU party, in a traffic-light coalition with the Greens and the AFD, had 26% in January 2026 (Smith 2026b). By June 1, CDU/CSU support had dropped to 22% (Politico 2026a).

In the United Kingdom, Starmer’s Labour Party, with its majority in Parliament after its landslide victory in July 2024, had by March 27, only 16% of voter support where it remained through to June, the lowest for a governing party and tied with the centre-right Conservates, while the far-right Reform UK led with about 25% (Politico 2026c). By April it had risen to 24% (Smith 2026a). But by the eve of the Evian Summit, 57% of respondents thought Starmer should stand down as leader of the Labour Party, and indeed on June 22, days after the summit, he announced his resignation (YouGov 2026b).

However, in Italy, on February 26, Italy’s YouTrend polling institute showed Meloni’s party, Fratelli d’Italia, maintained 29.1% of voting intentions, above its 26% in the 2022 legislative elections and 28% in the 2024 European elections (YouTrend 2026; Politico 2026b). Meloni had the highest approval of the three European leaders: by April it had risen to 35% (Smith 2026a).

In Canada, by March 29, Carney’s Liberal Party, with a strong parliamentary minority secured in 2025 for a four-year mandate, had steadily risen in voters’ satisfaction, with 59% approval and 32% disapproval, along with support for him as leader at 58% approval compared to 33% disapproval (338Canada 2026; Ipsos 2026). By May 31, Carney’s approval rating had slipped to a still strong 55% (338Canada 2026).

In Japan, the second most powerful G7 member, in January Takaichi’s cabinet had over 70% approval. She called a general election for the lower house of the Diet for February 8, where her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won an overwhelming majority. On March 30, following Takaichi’s meeting with Trump at the White House on March 19, her cabinet approval had risen to 72% although support for the LDP remained at 41% (Nikkei Staff Writers 2026).

While this collectively low domestic political control and capital often constrained leaders’ Evian performance, Trump’s very low domestic support led him to accommodate his G7 colleagues on Iran and Ukraine, to boost his personal and Republican Party’s popularity as the mid-term Congressional elections approached in November.

Club at the Hub

Strongly propelling Evian’s strong performance was the very high value G7 leaders had for their G7 club at the hub of a network of global summit governance. Unlike the G20 and BRICS summits, other plurilateral summit institutions, or UN high-level meetings, the leaders of all G7 members have always attended all annual G7 summits since the start in 1975, whoever the leader of the political party was. This is a striking contrast with the most recent G20 summit, in Johannesburg, South Africa, in November 2025, which was skipped by six leaders including Trump as well as Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump attended every G7 summit during his first four-year term as US president, hosted the scheduled virtual one in 2020 amid the exploding Covid-19 shock and came to Carney’s Kananaskis Summit in 2025 to start his second term.

As the G20 host, Trump was planning a stripped-down summit, with few ministerial meetings and agenda items, for the Miami Summit, to be held unusually late in mid-December. By June, he had mounted no special summits or issued any leaders’ statements. In sharp contrast, the G7 had produced a leaders’ statement on February 24 on the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and held a virtual summit on March 11 in response to the outbreak of the Middle East war on February 28. The G7 had also mounted several meetings virtually or in person for its foreign, finance, energy, trade, environment, digital, development, education, agriculture and labour ministers and issued multiple statements; by contrast, the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors had met only once on the margins of the IMF/World Bank meetings.

These comprehensive collective G7 meetings were supported by a dense array of partial, trilateral and bilateral visits among and between G7 leaders. They began with a meeting of the 34-member Coalition of the Willing of Ukraine in Paris on January 6, hosted by Macron and Starmer and attended by Carney, along with representatives of Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. The coalition’s Paris Declaration contained 12 commitments (Coalition of the Willing, Ukraine and the United States 2026). The interactions continued with Macron’s meetings with Carney and other G7 leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.

Another strong propellor was the extensive experience of the summit’s host, Emannuel Macron. He served as G7 sherpa for François Hollande from 2012 to 2014, and later as minister of the economy before his election as president. He was previously a banker at Rothschild and knew Carney from that period, when the Canadian prime minister was at Goldman Sachs.

Macron was also respected by Trump, despite the US president’s Truth Social outburst after leaving Kananaskis. And Macron was close to all the other European leaders, including the UK’s Starmer.

Macron has thus designed his summit from the start, to ensure above all that G7 unity would be preserved and enhanced, that Trump would come, stay the whole time, participate in all sessions, do so cooperatively and agree to all the G7 commitments, as he had at Carney’s Kananaskis Summit the previous year. Macron thus worked closely with Carney, and followed Carney’s success in issuing several statements on specific subjects rather than a single overall communiqué. But he replaced almost all of Carney’s eight subjects and statements with nine of his own, to respond to the new shocks (of Iran, Ukraine and Ebola), add the new Trump-friendly issues of macroeconomic imbalances, drug trafficking and migrant smuggling, and the innovative ones of international partnerships for development, cancer and minors’ safety. Gone were any statements or commitments on wildfires, the environment or climate change, and traditional G7 ones such as gender equality – all subjects that Trump strongly disliked.

Conclusion

Among Macron’s and thus the Evian leaders’ greatest achievements were having them make nine references, directions and agreements, across four subjects, on what Trump’s 2026 G20 summit would do in less than six months. At the Evian Summit’s end, it seemed that Emmanuel Macron’s G7 summit was leading Donald Trump’s G20 one in 2026, in the same direction, for the good of both and all.

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Appendix A: G7 Overall Performance, 1975–2026 ↩

Notes: Based on original research conducted by the G7 Research Group.

n/a = not available.

Grade: Kirton scale is A+ Extremely Strong, Striking, Standout, Historic; A Very Strong; A− Strong; B+ Significant; B Substantial; B− Solid; C Small; D Very Small; F Failure (including made things worse).

Domestic political management: # communiqué compliments = the number of favourable references to G7 members by name. Spread = number of G7 members complimented.

Deliberation: # days = the duration of the summit; # statements = number of official statements issued in the leaders’ name; # words = number of words contained in the official statements.

Direction setting: # affirmations of G7 core values of open democracy, individual liberty and human rights contained in official documents.

Decision making: # commitments contained in the official documents.

Delivery: The average compliance of 78% is calculated as the average of the equally weighted 800 commitments assessed. The compliance average is 71% when each year is equally weighted, including the first 16 years with data that have only 34 assessed commitments, all with exceptionally low scores. From 1975 to 1995, commitments assessed were largely on climate change; from 1996 on, 766 commitments selected on a broad range of issues have been assessed. George von Furstenberg and Joseph Daniels followed by Ella Kokotsis, assessing a larger number and broader range of commitments from 1975 to 1995, found substantially higher compliance than the data contained in this appendix.

Development of global governance: # ministerial meetings created = number of institutions at the ministerial level created; # official-level groups created = number of institutions at the officials level created. Institutions created at or by the summit, or during the hosting year, at least in the form of having one meeting take place.

Participation: # members = number of leaders of G7 members, including those representing the European Community from the start; Russia started as a participant in 1991 and became a full member in 1998 until its last participation in 2013; the G4 met in 1974 without Japan and Italy and later that year the G6 (without Canada) met. # participating countries = number of full members plus number of leaders from other countries. # participating international organizations whose leaders attended the summit.

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Appendix B: 2026 G7 Evian Summit Commitments ↩

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Appendix C: 2026 G7 Evian Summit Guests’ and Partners’ Support for G7 Commitments ↩

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Appendix D: G7 2026 Evian Summit Commitment References to International Organizations ↩

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