G7 opens in Evian as Trump enters talks with an Iran ceasefire deal in hand and allies braced for turbulence

The summit setting

The G7 gathers from Monday 15 June to Wednesday 17 June in the thermal town of Evian, on the shore of Lake Geneva. France is hosting the meeting of the United States, Germany, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada for the second time under Emmanuel Macron's presidency, after Biarritz in 2019. The Elysée entered the summit projecting confidence, calling it “already a success” before the opening session, and pointing to preparatory work on online child protection, cancer research and global macroeconomic imbalances. The venue is under heavy security, with 14,000 police and gendarmes deployed.

The Iran memorandum

The meeting opens in the shadow of an American-Iranian memorandum of understanding announced by Donald Trump on Sunday, the day of his 80th birthday. The protocol sets the framework for ending the war in the Middle East and, according to Pakistan, a formal signature is scheduled for Friday in Geneva. In a video posted to Instagram from Evian, Macron laid out the working agenda the deal imposes on the G7: “The objective will be to see the consequences of this agreement, the support for Lebanon, the lasting reopening of Ormuz, and obviously the conclusion of a nuclear and ballistic accord in Iran.” He added that the leaders will also examine “ways and means of diversifying the energy routes that leave the region to escape our dependence,” and therefore “the consequences of the Middle East crisis on our economies.”

The Trump factor

Donald Trump's track record at G7 summits has allies preparing for friction. At Taormina in 2017 he broke with the group on climate and pulled the US out of the Paris agreement a week later. At Charlevoix in 2018 he left early and disavowed the final communiqué in a tweet from Air Force One, accusing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of “falsehoods.” At Biarritz in 2019 Macron scrapped the joint declaration, replacing it with a single-page text to avoid a last-minute psychodrama. Trump later called the G7 “a very outdated group of countries” and pushed to readmit Russia, excluded from the G8 since the 2014 Crimea invasion. The four subsequent G7 summits under Joe Biden all produced joint declarations, but Trump's return puts that practice in doubt. At Kananaskis in 2025, he left twelve hours before the end.

Allies managing the bilateral strain

Relations between the US and European members are under pressure over Trump's threats to withdraw from NATO and his stated interest in taking control of Greenland, a territory under Danish sovereignty. Nevertheless, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney expressed cautious optimism about the French presidency's handling of the gathering. “I believe that President Macron's style, which is direct, concrete and ambitious, lends itself well to making progress with all G7 partners, including President Donald Trump,” Carney wrote on X. Prepared ministerial work has been productive, and negotiators are ready with a substantive joint declaration covering the environmental impact of digital technology, artificial intelligence regulation and online child protection. Whether it survives contact with the American president is an open question.

The objective will be to see the consequences of this agreement, the support for Lebanon, the lasting reopening of Ormuz, and obviously the conclusion of a nuclear and ballistic accord in Iran.

The long road to a durable peace

Analysts caution that the memorandum does not guarantee a lasting settlement. French daily Le Figaro describes it as a deal that would reward Tehran's intransigence and warns that a bad peace may be preparing the next war. The memorandum is being read by some commentators as a defeat for Trump's maximum-pressure approach, and the path toward a durable resolution of the conflict remains long. The G7's crisis agenda is therefore crowded: the Middle East settlement, the protracted war in Ukraine, and the underlying energy-dependence question Macron flagged will be central to the three days of talks.