From 15th to 17th June 2026, the calm lakeside French town of Évian-les-Bains in the Swiss Alps hosted the world-view war in Haute-Savoie. The town’s welcome to the world for two G7/G8 summits is historic, making it the first French municipality to offer such a service. The exterior was quite spectacular, and the security area’s interior was quite tense. The government that was so ambitious that it brought together, this year, the regular delegation of Western economic powers: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union, with an expanded list of participants to lend an air of freshness to globalisation’s governance. The presence of leaders from Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya, South Korea, Qatar, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates offered deep-rooted global cooperation.
The motorcades departed on Wednesday afternoon, and by then an incredible amount of documentation had been produced as a result of the summit – nine joint declarations. The deal in principle is a success of multilateral diplomacy. With the ink dried, though, a grim and old story emerges from the hopeful letters. The Évian Summit will probably not be remembered for any great new idea or discovery, but for a lesson in an old and ubiquitous art form: bold statements with appalling hollow deliverables.
It was to be expected that the main thrust of the summit would be on the world’s most explosive flashpoints. The G7 leaders took a giant step toward unity in the presence of Ukrainian President Zelensky. The resulting declaration contained a ‘genuine strategic awakening,’ and the countries expressed their support for Ukraine’s freedom, sovereignty, and territorial integrity in a loud voice. There were threats to increase the military’s support – from air defence to long-range systems and interceptors – and to put pressure on the Russian economy through oil and gas.
Yet, despite the assertion that this was an ‘awakening’, nothing particularly spectacular was included in the declaration with direct and binding dates or immediate mechanisms for deploying defence forces. A ‘strategic awakening’ without the backing of a military force is something Ukraine cannot afford, as it faces constant danger on the front lines and systemic failures the country must overcome.
The gap between rhetoric and reality widened further when the Middle East came into play. The G7 made a very optimistic statement, building a general agreement towards the immediate and unconditional re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Talking to Iran about its nuclear threat and its regional chaos is a good thing, but the declaration was lacking in any plan on how to make Tehran comply with what it has to.
The position of the summit on Lebanon was the same: a statement of wish, not a geopolitical plan. The G7 urged just a ‘robust and prompt cease-fire’ and asked for Hezbollah’s disarmament to allow the ‘Lebanese state to have a monopoly on arms.’ There is no way the State will be divided by an executive order. All these commitments are barking up the wrong tree if there are no rules to enforce and no effective peacekeeping procedures.
Along with the immediate crisis, the plan of action for Évian aimed to tackle the systemic problems of the global economy. Much attention was paid to macroeconomic imbalances, and leaders were eager to agree on the need to coordinate economic policies for the common good. The goal? To provide industry protection, job protection, and prevent future trade wars. The only thing the G7 could do was to blame the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for keeping these imbalances at the heart of monitoring, and to postpone the real hard discussions to the next G20 meeting. It was a good example of a typical case of passing the buck in the bureaucracy. As protectionism has been growing and old alliances have been breaking down due to unilateral tariffs, the G7 offered hollow assurances of ‘fair competition’ but failed to take any further steps to reduce the trade barriers erected by its members.
The same toothless approach marred the summit’s foray into the digital age. The potential impact AI could have on the mental health of the next generation has raised concerns, and Latham leaders pledged to protect youth, especially the need to ‘re-word’ the language of AI chatbots for children. The G7 has declared that it will be working with ‘leading companies’ to do so at a ‘fast and safe’ pace.
History shows that the self-regulation of multibillion-dollar tech companies is ineffective. The G7 essentially gave Silicon Valley a pass by choosing cooperative dialogue over imposing concrete, legally binding international standards for AI safety. The G7, as part of this, effectively gave Silicon Valley a pass, under the guise of a public relations victory.
The rest of the nine declarations sound more like an aggressive Christmas wish list, and they cover all the good causes you can think of, but none of which have the system capital to solve them. There was consensus among civil society on critical minerals that this would reduce dependence on supply chains. A kind effort was made to share the information on cancers with poor prognosis and pediatric cancers in healthcare. Leaders also committed themselves to working on transnational crime, with greater cooperation between seaports across international waters, and on migrant smuggling and trafficking. All of these became a crisis for the human family, and all were only second- and third-order thoughts, cloaked in diplomatic rhetoric.
The only concrete monetary contribution from Haute-Savoie was a pledge to provide $1 billion in funding to help address a potential Ebola health emergency with the UN. It is an awful lot of money, but epidemiologists know that $1 billion is a small bandage on a leaky global health system. It’s just a ‘patch-on-the-wound’ solution to a gunshot wound all over the place.
Twenty-three years ago, Évian hosted the then world leaders during a seismic shock to the world order, split by the Iraq war, but powerful enough economic forces still influenced the world’s moves. The G7 today represents a narrow band of the world’s GDP, operating in a multipolar world. Cumulations of statecraft can’t sustain an event such as the Évian Summit in relevance, so it must be built on a foundation of purpose.
Their message was watered down by nine different statements about Hezbollah, AI chatbot ‘languages,’ and more, and then they were caught off guard, indecisive, and self-doubting. Saying you’re going to do it doesn’t mean you will. The 2026 Évian Summit will be a legend in the mountains for a great weekend, great photo ops, and wonderful empty promises. But the world needs many more, alas, than prose.
The writer is a Professor, Department of International Relations, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh, Director, Hong Kong Research Centre for Asian Studies-Bangladesh Center (RCASBC). Email: [email protected]
