The logo of G7 Photo: VCG

As leaders gathered Monday in the French commune of Évian-les-Bains for the 2026 Group of Seven summit, the annual meeting opened under a cloud of growing skepticism. 

The summit still carries the familiar markers of high diplomacy: carefully staged meetings, sweeping declarations and intense media attention. But behind the formal setting, more media outlets and observers are asking whether the club of wealthy nations has become increasingly disconnected from today's international realities.

Chinese experts told the Global Times that mechanisms such as the G7 are showing signs of becoming outdated. Rather than projecting Western unity, this year's summit exposed widening divisions across the Atlantic and a growing gap between the G7's ambitions and its ability to respond to global challenges, they said. 

Divide, not unite

The summit agenda has largely centered on a tentative deal to end the Iran war, ongoing discussions regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the broader Middle East crisis. Aside from G7 member states, France has invited leaders from Ukraine, India, the Republic of Korea, Kenya, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, to take part in this year's working session that focusing on international investment, according to media reports. 

Yet after the first day of meetings, no major breakthrough had emerged. Instead, one of the segment headlines in the Associated Press' live summit coverage read: "European leaders joke with Meloni about quitting smoking."

G7 leaders also attended a working lunch to discuss the situation in the Middle East, where the conversation is expected to focus on the path ahead after the ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran, according to AP. 

The US leader also told reporters that he is "not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and with Hezbollah." He said Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needed to be "more responsible with respect to Lebanon," according to the CNN.

In terms of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the G7 leaders, including Trump, has gathered with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for an hour and 15 minutes Tuesday morning at the summit in Evian-les-Bains. The talks focused on how to "build peace and security for Ukraine and Europe," the French organizers of the summit said, per the AP. 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has had a frosty relationship with Trump, gave the US president a soccer jersey with Trump's name and the number 47 on the back, according to the AP. The shirt had the name "Trump" emblazoned on the back along with the number 47, in reference to his status as the 47th president of the US. The US is currently co-hosting the FIFA World Cup. 

The AFP commented that the G7 were "seeking to find unity after a year when Trump has troubled allies with sometimes unilateral foreign policy moves and hefty tariffs on imports."

Even before this year's summit officially began, doubts over its prospects had already surfaced in US media.

In an analysis published on Sunday, The New York Times wrote that the "Group of 7 meetings once embodied the effort to sustain the global diplomatic order. This year's gathering, starting on Monday, symbolizes its fragmentation."

Recalling the 2003 G8 summit, also held in Évian-les-Bains, which managed to "maintain the veneer of like-minded countries uniting to confront the perils of an unruly world," the report argued that this year "the veneer has been stripped away."

According to the report, US President Donald Trump arrived in France to meet European leaders who no longer view Washington as a reliable partner on key issues such as climate change and security. In some cases, they regard the US itself as a threat, citing Washington's attacks on Iran, growing disdain for NATO and repeated suggestions of taking over Greenland. 

The G7, previously the G8, was originally intended to play a leading role in addressing major international political and economic issues and shaping global governance. However, both its declining influence and deepening internal contradictions have made it increasingly difficult for the grouping to fulfill that role, Cui Hongjian, a professor at the Academy of Regional and Global Governance at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

According to Cui, the effectiveness of the G7 has long depended on cooperation among its members outweighing their differences and consensus prevailing over disagreements. Yet that balance is changing. European participants increasingly find themselves making compromises to accommodate US' positions while simultaneously seeking new common objectives to divert attention from growing internal disputes and preserve the cohesion of the grouping.

At this year's summit, Cui said, issues such as Russia and energy security have become focal points. While some members have attempted to use China as a common target around which to rally consensus, so far, those efforts have been unsuccessful, he said. 

Li Haidong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that economic differences between the US and its European partners are becoming increasingly pronounced. While Washington has grown more skeptical of economic globalization, many European economies remain deeply dependent on it. 

Such contradictions have been evident throughout this year's summit, making the G7 increasingly resemble a platform for displaying transatlantic disagreements rather than unity, Li said.

"The divisions within the G7 suggest that a cohesive and integrated West may no longer exist," Li noted.

China's presence felt despite absence

Although official summit agendas have largely avoided direct references to China, media outlets and observers have paid close attention to China's presence - and absence - throughout the gathering.

According to an AP report published on Tuesday, China's trade practices are expected to rank among the top issues discussed by leaders meeting in Évian-les-Bains. French officials indicated in pre-summit briefings that they hoped the gathering would produce a coordinated plan to address what they described as the "China threat."

The report noted that Europeans also hope to persuade Trump to stop targeting US allies like the EU and Canada with punitive tariffs and to start working with them instead to counter China. 

Attempting to strengthen internal cohesion by confronting China and externalizing internal contradictions is unlikely to succeed, Li said. Without resolving the grouping's own divisions and structural problems, creating an external rival will not generate lasting unity.

"It also cannot reverse the decline of the mechanism itself," Li said.

French President Emmanuel Macron has sought to make responses to China a priority at this year's summit, according to a Politico report on Monday. However, the report noted that "the White House didn't even mention China in the list of priorities it has for the summit."

Beyond occasional remarks by French and German leaders, other participating countries, including Canada, the UK, Italy and the US, had made few public statements on China as of press time. 

Some observers have focused on a different question: whether the G7 can still exercise the influence it seeks without the participation of the world's second-largest economy.

"As Trump and his G7 counterparts gather again in France from Monday, China's exclusion from the informal club's summits also looks odd, given its now immense sway over the world's economic well-being and affairs," the AP wrote in a report published Sunday.

"Put simply: Without China, does the G7 make sense?" the report asked.