SHAMSA AREF AL QUBAISI*
For 50 years, the Group of Seven (G7) operated on a simple premise: that a small circle of advanced industrial states could find solutions to major international economic and political issues. However, this week’s summit in Evian quietly demonstrated a challenge to that simple premise.
The G7 was launched in 1975, when the first oil crisis revealed the need for enhanced international economic cooperation. Originally, the forum was created because an energy shock originating in the Arab world brought strain on Western economies.
Five decades later, we can see that the geography of strategic influence has come full circle with leaders from the UAE, Egypt and Qatar sitting at the table as partners.
The heads of state were personally welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron before a working session aimed at resolving crises and maintaining peace in the Middle East.
Evidently, this is not a simple gesture in terms of diplomacy, but rather a recognition of the extent to which these states have become important stakeholders in regional stability. They are actors whose choices have a direct impact on the G7’s reliance on trade routes, energy flows and security architecture.
The summit opened days after the announcement of a peace deal between the United States and Iran, which put an end to a crisis that had caused the Strait of Hormuz to close.
The timing made that dependency impossible to conceal because reopening the Strait of Hormuz was a task that required actors who possess geographic and diplomatic proximity to the crisis, which the G7 simply did not possess.
France and Britain had pledged to form a coalition to reopen the waterway, including clearing mines laid by Iran during the conflict. Such an operation requires various levels of cooperation with Gulf states, whose geographic location and diplomatic ties are integral to the security climate in the area. What that reveals is a quiet but consequential shift in where influence over regional crises resides.
This distinction matters analytically because a multilateral forum that grows to genuinely share decision-making authority works very differently from one that grows to gain legitimacy or operational capacity that it cannot generate internally.
This time in Evian, the French presidency prioritised communication and areas of agreement over legally binding agreements. This resulted in a summit that was more inclusive in composition than in authority.
On the other hand, the critical minerals agenda makes this dynamic particularly tangible. The G7 does not hold dominant positions across the critical minerals value chain, from extraction and refining to industrial processing.
Therefore, by including states such as Kenya, Brazil and South Korea in the process, the summit acknowledged that supply chain security cannot be negotiated independently of the countries that hold control over the resources.
Their seat, therefore, serves a functional necessity because the resources that underpin the G7’s own industrial and technological ambitions happen to lie within their borders.
Taken together, these developments indicate that contemporary multilateral forums increasingly depend on their capacity to involve actors whose geopolitical and economic significance goes beyond their official membership.
What Evian signals is a forum undergoing active reconfiguration, one whose original logic of a smaller, more value-aligned circle has been tested by a reality in which the problems require coordination far beyond its membership.
*The writer is a researcher at TRENDS Research & Advisory