// JOHN KIRTON John Kirton is the director of the G7 Research Group, the G20 Research Group and the BRICS Research Group and co-director of the Global Health Diplomacy Program, under the umbrella of the Global Governance Program at the University of Toronto, where he is a professor emeritus of political science. He is author of G20 Governance for a Globalized World, co−author of Reconfiguring the Global Governance of Climate Change , and co-editor of G7 Canada: The 2025 Kananaskis Summit as well as a global health series, including the recent Health: A Political Choice – The Future of Health in a Fractured World. X-TWITTER @jjkirton www.g7.utoronto.ca
attack on Iran and the new need to create a durable end to that war and repair the immense damage it has caused. Also important are Évian’s political and institutional priorities. The first is maintaining unity among the G7 lead- ers, including its most powerful member, the United States. The second is showing this unity by making many fully agreed, ambitious, innovative commitments that members will faithfully implement during the following year. The third is to get the invited guest leaders to partici- pate as equal partners in the G7’s global governance and extend the impact of the Évian consensus through the G20, BRICS and the other plurilateral summit forums they help lead.
and development partnerships, its out- reach to consequential partners, the digital economy, artificial intelligence and quantum technology, and child- hood safety. More unpredictable is its performance on the now preoccupying priorities of the US-led war against Iran and Russia’s war against Ukraine, and their impact on G7 and global energy, supply chains, food and financial secu- rity, and environmental protection. This potentially significant perfor- mance will be driven by the many strong shock-activated vulnerabilities in secu- rity, energy and possibly the economy, major multilateral organisational failure by United Nations bodies in response, and the significant predominant, equal- ising capabilities of G7 members and their participating democratic partners, but offset by the constraints from their leaders’ diverging principles and often poor domestic political support. Above all, their performance should be propelled by the significant value that these G7 leaders place on the G7 as their club at the hub of a growing net- work of global summit governance. This
has been seen in the many meetings and statements from G7 leaders and their ministers during the first five months of 2026. More broadly, all G7 leaders have always come to all G7 summits for their full 51-year life, including Donald Trump for all five during his presiden- cies to date. He helped produce the 150 commitments made at the Kananaskis Summit in 2025 and G7 member govern- ments complied with them at a level of 75% during the following five months. And he will want his fellow G7 leaders at Évian to create a firm foundation for the even more successful summits he plans to host for the G20 in Miami on 14–15 December 2026 and for the G7 one he will design and deliver at home in 2027.
THE POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS
The Évian Summit thus has the potential to produce a significant performance, despite the poor domestic support for several leaders and the unpredictability of Donald Trump. The summit promises to advance its initial priorities of mac- roeconomic policy, trade, investment
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