ÉVIAN-LES-BAINS, France — As host of this week’s G7 summit, French President Emmanuel Macron faces a challenge in the last big diplomatic set-piece of his presidency: He has to keep Donald Trump interested and stop him from bailing out early.
Expectations of what can be achieved in the Alpine spa town of Évian are already low.
Instead of the traditional joint communiqué issued by the world’s leading economies, the plan in Évian is to produce a series of narrower declarations, while Macron will issue summaries of discussions on geopolitical issues.
The French president has obvious grounds to worry about how much of a priority this summit is to Trump. Macron has already moved the date to accommodate Trump’s birthday party, where he wants to watch a gladiator-style cage fight on the White House lawn.
According to five French officials and European diplomats, the task is less about striking grand bargains, and more about simply keeping Trump engaged in the conversations about Russia’s war in Ukraine and the energy crisis triggered by the war in Iran.
For many of the diplomats jetting into the French Alps, they say it boils down to keeping the diplomacy running and keeping up appearances.
“It will be a success if there is a family photo,” said one European diplomat, who was granted anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivities around Trump’s G7 appearance.
“It’s a place where they will talk, but I’m not sure anything will come out of it,” said a former French official, who has stayed in touch with his former colleagues on economic files.
That will mean drawing on all of Macron’s skills as entertainer-in-chief and will force him to draw on all his experience of dazzling Trump with French pomp and ceremony. It will be one of the last times that Macron will command the world’s attention as a diplomatic convener, as his presidency winds down ahead of a presidential election next year.
Ahead of the G7 summit, Macron said talks at the G7 would focus on critical minerals, artificial intelligence, energy, protecting children online and trade.
“Trade tensions are bad for growth. We believe in a free trade based on rules that benefits all and the refusal of economic coercion and… we have launched a discussion on reducing macro-economic unbalances,” he said alongside the Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney in Paris.
The danger for the Europeans is that Trump won’t take them seriously, as they have rarely appeared so weak. Macron is a lame duck and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is fighting for his political life. The U.S. president’s formerly warm relations with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have also soured in recent months.
“Despite all the efforts of the French presidency, the G7 format has lost much of its relevance,” an EU official said.
Most problematically, any gains secured in Évian could prove fleeting, whether it’s on Ukraine, Greenland or on the Middle East.
Trump “will say something and then he’ll change his mind the next day. He’s incapable of saying something and sticking to it,” said the former French government official.
For Trump, “it’s power projection, shows he’s friends with six of the biggest economies in the world,” said a second European official. “And it’s an opportunity to show he’s the boss, not Macron.”
Keeping Trump on track
In the run-up to the summit, the French president has spared no effort to keep Trump happy.
In addition to moving the date around Trump’s birthday, he is treating the U.S. president to a dinner at the Palace of Versailles at the end of the G7 summit, amid plans to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence.
Still, the efforts appeared to have paid off, with French officials saying the two leaders speak regularly on the phone. That’s an improvement since a low in their notoriously mercurial relationship when Trump humiliated Macron by publishing a private message from the French president ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos in February.
“Despite the occasional arm-wrestling in front of cameras, the relationship appears to be rather good,” said the second European diplomat who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Trump and Macron “were both presidents during Mr. Trump’s first term, and I believe that President Macron’s style … which is direct — it’s concrete and it’s ambitious — is well suited to making progress with all G7 partners, very much, including President Trump,” Carney said on Friday in Paris.
But with two wars unfolding in Ukraine and in the Middle East, a lot could go wrong in Évian.
According to French officials, the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and Tehran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, which is driving up global energy and fuel prices, will dominate conversations.
The Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and the United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan are flying in on Tuesday to add their voices to Macron and others who will be pressing Trump to make peace in the region.
“We can’t just play a symbolic role. We must influence the situation in the Strait of Hormuz,” said a third European diplomat. “But right now decisions are being made without us, just as they are in Ukraine.”
But the Europeans lack leverage. At the G7 summit, they will continue to push their proposed maritime mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz once the fighting stops as their contribution to resolving the conflict.
“We’ll keep calling for restraint, because the escalation of violence is negative for all of us and … our own economies,” said the spokesperson for France’s foreign ministry, Pascal Confavreux. “And [we’re] being proactive with our proposal to deploy a maritime multinational mission.”
But, despite signs that the U.S. and Iran appear close to a deal, that deployment doesn’t yet appear imminent.
Deliverables
When it comes to Ukraine, Macron will stress that Europe really is now pulling its weight — as Trump has demanded. Even if the U.S. president is unwilling to help, it will be seen as a win if he doesn’t actively seek to undermine Kyiv.
“Europeans pay for almost 100 percent of aid to Ukraine,” said an official from Macron’s office in a briefing with reporters ahead of the G7 summit. “It’s important that other G7 partners, in particular the United States … at the very least, don’t degrade their position regarding Ukraine.”
After initially excluding Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy from the summit, the organizers are now planning a two-hour session with the Ukrainian president on Tuesday. The idea is to persuade Trump that Ukraine is gaining an upper hand in the fighting.
“Trump likes winners,” said the third European diplomat quoted above. “Last year, Zelenskyy didn’t hold the cards. But the situation has changed,” said the diplomat, noting a €90 billion loan from the EU, the difficulties facing the Russian army on the frontline and Kyiv’s defense cooperation with Gulf nations.
As France, Germany and the U.K. take on a larger role in potential peace talks with Russia, European governments hope to use this brief access to Trump to discourage him from pursuing any misguided diplomatic gambits with Moscow.
All of this depends on him actually being in the room. And for now, the French seem confident he will be there and that they have ways of making him stick around.
“We can rejoice in that, it’s the bare minimum really,” said the former French government official. “Or else the G7 really would be dead.”
Esther Webber, Mike Blanchfield and Giorgio Leali contributed reporting.