The last time the leaders of the world’s richest countries gathered in Évian-les-Bains, France, in June 2003, the United States had just invaded Iraq over the strident objections of France and Germany. President George W. Bush got chilly handshakes, but he and the other leaders worked to maintain the veneer of like-minded countries uniting to confront the perils of an unruly world.
Twenty-three years later, as leaders gather in the same town amid another American war in the Middle East, the veneer has been stripped away.
When President Trump arrives on Monday afternoon in Évian, an Alpine spa town on the southern shore of Lake Geneva, he will be greeted by European leaders who no longer view the United States as a partner on key issues such as climate change and security. In some cases, they view the United States as a threat, after Mr. Trump’s destabilizing attacks on Iran that have roiled the world economy, his deepening disdain for NATO, and his threats to take over Greenland.
“From the beginning of Trump’s second term, up until Greenland, the rule of thumb for America’s allies was, ‘Let’s bite our tongue and be nice to Trump,’” said Charles A. Kupchan, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University. “Greenland and Iran are a double whammy, where allies now say, ‘We’ll work with Trump where possible, but we have to say no when necessary.’”
However rancorous the split over the Iraq war in 2003, Mr. Kupchan said that it did not fracture the foundations of NATO or of other multilateral institutions like the Group of 7. “That’s not where we are now,” he said, adding, “There isn’t a consensus within the G7 about what to do.”
That does not mean the leaders will not seek to find some common ground. Wars are rumbling on in Ukraine and Iran. Global energy supplies are being disrupted by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Worries about how artificial intelligence will upend the labor force are prompting calls for government regulation.
But the split does mean that France’s goals for the meeting are necessarily less ambitious than at previous such gatherings. For the host, President Emmanuel Macron, the biggest challenge will be personal: persuading Mr. Trump not to bail out early, as he has from previous Group of 7 summits.
Mr. Macron made progress on that score by inviting Mr. Trump to dine with him at Versailles, the opulent summer palace of France’s kings, on Wednesday, after the meeting ends. The dinner will celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, which, French officials noted, was enshrined in a treaty signed at Versailles in 1783. Mr. Macron had pushed back the start of the Group of 7 to accommodate Mr. Trump, so he can attend an evening of cage fights at the White House on Sunday, his 80th birthday.
Jeremy Shapiro, a director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a research group with offices in Berlin and London, said, “The recipe for this summit, as with every summit involving Trump, is not to have a blowup, and to suggest that everything is OK, which none of them believe anymore.”
Mr. Trump’s mercurial style has long made these meetings unpredictable. He cut short his attendance at two Group of 7 gatherings hosted by Canada, in 2018 and 2025. But Mr. Shapiro said the rupture between the United States and its allies had become more profound after the Iran war began, which Mr. Trump started without consulting Europe’s leaders, and especially, after his threats to take over Greenland.
On the security issue that most concerns Europe’s leaders, Ukraine, Mr. Trump shows little interest in re-engaging in a peace negotiation. On Iran, the issue that has most preoccupied Mr. Trump, the Group of 7 leaders have refused to join the war effort, drawing bitter rebukes from the American president.
Part of the problem for Europe’s leaders is that Mr. Trump’s vitriol toward Europe has made it harder to support the United States. The president has become so unpopular with Europeans that even onetime political allies, like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, are distancing themselves from him.
“Trump has made everything so toxic,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The leaders in Europe are saying, ‘It is so hard to help the U.S. because he has been so nasty to them.’”
Yet the leaders of the Group of 7 diverge on how far to pull away from the United States, differences that reflect history and geography. Germany and Japan are situated closer to threatening neighbors — Russia and China — than is Canada. Analysts said that allowed the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, to speak more freely than his German and Japanese counterparts about a definitive split from Washington.
France has historically charted a more independent course toward the United States than Britain has. Mr. Macron began calling for Europe to pursue “strategic autonomy” in Mr. Trump’s first term. Until recently, Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, had emphasized the need to stay in sync with Washington on key security issues.
But that is changing, too. London refused to allow American warplanes to use British air bases for offensive operations in Iran, though it does let U.S. planes take off for what it describes as “defensive” ones. Some Britons were inflamed when Vice President JD Vance waded into domestic issues, like the stabbing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old college student, which he blamed on the “politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants.”
“Trump is practicing foreign politics, not foreign policy,” said Ben Judah, who advised David Lammy when he was Britain’s foreign secretary and is now a visiting fellow at Chatham House, a London think tank. “On a political level, it is very clear that the United Kingdom has an America problem.”
Mr. Macron has scheduled topical lunches and dinners for the leaders and invited guests, including President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt. But French officials cannot predict what role Mr. Trump will play.
The French also want to focus on economic imbalances between China and the West. Mr. Trump, who has just returned from a meeting with President Xi Jinping in Beijing, would be well placed to lead a discussion on that issue. But French officials said they were not certain what to make of Mr. Trump’s China policy.
According to Mr. Shapiro, “What they’d like to do is to get the U.S. in a room and hash out some issues.” Instead, he added, half in jest, “Six of them will excuse themselves and go to the bathroom.”
Then, he said, “They’ll have those conversations.”
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