Meet in Canada: what was achieved at the G7 summit – and what not

Despite the early departure of US President Donald Trump and a lack of success in central dispute issues, several G7 countries have rated their summit in Canada positively. “This G7 summit is much more successful than I thought at the beginning,” said Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) in Kananaskis. He pointed out that an agreement on mutually acceptable explanations on seven topics had been achieved. The Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, as the host, held the group of leading democratic business powers together, praised France President Emmanuel Macron.

Even US President Donald Trump, who confused the summit with his premature departure and wedged from the plane against Macron, praised the summit: “I loved it. And I think we got a lot done.” In concrete terms, however, he only called the progress announced at the Rocky Mountains’ meeting in his trading pact with Great Britain – which actually has nothing to do with the G7 summit.

The non -governmental organization Oxfam accused the G7 with a view to the summit results of stealing responsibility. The group of states had given its chance to put pressure on peace in the Middle East, said Oxfam – and denounced lack of progress in climate protection and development aid.

So what can the group of states show in the Rocky Mountains after the summit – and what fell by the wayside?

The G7 format is not dead

After all: The first G7 summit in Trump’s second term in office has not ended in a very big debacle. That sounds like little, but it was not made in the face of the great differences between the US president and his colleagues. It is remembered how Trump let the group of 2018 burst from the 2018 Canada summit by subsequently withdrawing his approval for the final declaration. A fiasco of this size was able to avoid hosts Carney. The West is still (at least limited).

This is also important because a large part of the round will meet again next week at the NATO summit in the Haag, where a new NATO destination for defense spending is to be decided under the pressure of Trump. Ultimately, it is about nothing less than the question of whether the United States is still available as a protective power for Europe.

Seven times in line

Carney has at least a few concrete results. A total of seven explanations said goodbye to the G7 bosses, for example to fight irregular migration and smugglers. Specifically, it is about intensifying hunting for smuggling gangs by even better monitoring money flows.

With a new Action Plan for Critical Minerals, the G7 countries want to reduce their dependence on authoritarian raw material powers such as China and secure their own supply chains for strategically important raw materials such as lithium, cobalt or rare earth. And when using artificial intelligence, the G7 want to play a pioneering role – not only for economic growth, but also for social benefits.

However: mostly, it is less controversial topics and agreements with a manageable scope. The really hot iron were excluded.

Joint position on the Iran war

One of the seven explanations was a real surprise: the common positioning for the war between Israel and Iran. At least in one of the most explosive geopolitical topics, the round was able to find a common line: commitment to Israel’s right to self -defense, call for the protection of civilians – and the dictum that Iran should never have an atomic bomb. However, the text does not indicate how a way out of the escalation could be found. And Trump not only leaves the G7, but the whole world in the unclear whether he wants to intervene in the war on the side of Israel.

What was not achieved:

Further split at Russia

In the Ukraine War, Trump and Europeans still do not pull together. The Ukrainian President Wolodymyr Selenskyj traveled to Canada to influence Trump together with the European G7 countries. They want them to increase the pressure on Moscow and approved new US sanctions. But when the G7 bosses were sitting with Selenskyj on Tuesday, Trump had long since left.

However, Chancellor Merz is confident that there could soon be movement: “With the careful optimism, I will go back to Germany that there will also be decisions in America in the next few days to impose further sanctions against Russia.” Canada and Great Britain have already announced further punitive measures, the EU is currently working on the 18th package.

No visible progress in the customs dispute between the EU and the USA

A breakthrough in the customs dispute is not in sight. The commission president Ursula von der Leyen, responsible in the EU, spoke in Canada with Trump on the topic, but she could not proclaim concrete progress. Only Chancellor Merz spread some optimism. He was confident that there can be at least a limited deal with the USA by July 9 – for example for selected areas such as the auto industry. If no agreement is reached by July 9th, new high US tariffs are reaching almost all exports from the EU to the United States – and the EU would in turn respond with tariffs on imports from the USA.

Trump scolds and provoked

Trump started the summit with a provocation when he again criticized the exclusion of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin from the G8 after the annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea in 2014. The hours that he was with the summit then remained without scandal – but this level of commonality was promptly put back into perspective by its subsequent distribution against Macron.

And with his early departure, the impression came about that it has given the G7 format as a forum of the western economic powers – but it must be mentioned that other G7 bosses in the past have already left peaks in the past. But a signal of the unity did not run out of this summit.

No joint declaration of final

A comprehensive joint declaration had already been avoided in advance to prevent failure. This underlines: With the major issues, the G7 do not find a common line.

Important topics fell completely under the table

Some topics in which the G7 countries have set important accents in the past did not even take place because Trump would not be able to reach any agreement anyway. For example, the development aid – the authority responsible for this in the United States had been stamped under Trump. And although the G7 participants are deeply concerned about the “record-breaking forest fires” in the past ten years, climate change is not mentioned as an important factor on the United States. Both topics were part of the G7’s mandatory program on previous peaks.