Évian G7 Summit: Digital Economy, Trade and Emerging Technology

The 2026 G7 summit runs June 15–17 in Évian-les-Bains, France, bringing together leaders from the world’s major democratic economies at a moment of mounting pressure on the institutions and norms that underpin global cooperation. Trade fragmentation, competition over critical technologies and fractures in the multilateral system have left the G7’s role in global governance more uncertain — and more consequential — than it has been in years.

With the summit’s agenda spanning digital economy governance, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum technologies and international trade, we asked four CIGI experts what commitments G7 leaders should make at Évian, and what’s at stake if they don’t deliver.

Global Economy

The Évian G7 Summit is expected to frame leaders’ discussion through two global economic prisms. The first is “global imbalances”: macroeconomic divergence, industrial overcapacity, debt, underinvestment, critical minerals concentration and the disruptive effects of AI. This is a largely veiled frame for concerns about Chinese surplus capacity and subsidized production — from steel to electric vehicles — and the strategic vulnerabilities created by the concentration of rare earths supply chains. The second is development finance reform to promote a shift toward stronger domestic resource mobilization, better coordination among multilateral development banks and greater leverage of private capital.

Both are legitimate priorities. But the G7 should be more transparent about inherent trade-offs. On imbalances, the issue is not only China. It is also potentially G7 industrial policies themselves, including “America First” measures and allied policies, which can generate distortions, duplication and subsidy races. On digitalization, a central test will be whether G7 countries can reduce dependence on US-based AI, cloud and data infrastructure without fragmenting the digital economy. And on development finance, domestic resource mobilization and private capital are not simple substitutes for declining official development assistance, which fell by 23 percent in 2025.

Digital Economy, AI Governance and Fintech

The G7 should commit at Évian to preventing the fragmentation of the global digital economy into rival technological blocs. While economic security, resilience and technological sovereignty are legitimate priorities, growing restrictions on data flows, technology transfers and digital infrastructure risk replacing digital inclusion with digital division.

The digital economy’s core building blocks — such as AI, cloud computing, digital payments, emerging financial technologies and digital identity — are increasingly shaped by geopolitical competition. Unchecked fragmentation will reduce interoperability, raise costs, slow innovation and further disadvantage developing economies unable to operate across multiple competing systems.

The G7 should champion a framework of secure interoperability that safeguards national security while preserving openness, trusted cross-border connectivity and common standards. Priorities should include cooperation on AI governance, trusted data flows, cybersecurity, cross-border payments and digital public infrastructure.

To ensure lasting impact, the G7 must engage beyond its membership, working with major digital powers and emerging economies including India, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Korea and others to advance shared rules and technical standards.

The central challenge is not technological leadership alone. It is whether the next phase of digital transformation strengthens global prosperity, innovation and inclusion or deepens geopolitical fragmentation.

Trade Policy and Multilateral Institutions

The global trading system is evolving from a rules-based order centred on most-favoured-nation (MFN) treatment toward a fragmented landscape of preferential trade agreements and regional arrangements.

Under an MFN-based system, verifying the origin of imports is of limited importance because trade preferences are extended to all trading partners. By contrast, preferential trade agreements depend on rules of origin to determine eligibility for preferential treatment, making origin verification crucially important.

This challenge is becoming more acute as trade itself changes. Digitally delivered services are among the fastest-growing components of international commerce, blurring traditional distinctions between goods, services and data. Yet existing rules of origin were designed for physical products. They are difficult to apply to digital services and immaterial data, whose creation, storage, processing and delivery often span multiple jurisdictions. In a digital economy, the very notion of “origin” becomes increasingly ambiguous.

As a result, extending preferential treatment to digital trade may require more intrusive monitoring of data flows, creating tensions between economic security, privacy and innovation. The risk is clear: a fragmented trading system could easily evolve into a fragmented and increasingly state-controlled digital ecosystem.

This makes transparency and regulatory interoperability more important than ever. As trade becomes increasingly digital and less reliant on MFN treatment, trusted data corridors, interoperable regulatory frameworks and common standards for data adequacy become essential to preserve openness, predictability and economic security.

While the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) transparency mechanisms remain indispensable, compliance with notification obligations is often incomplete or absent, limiting policy makers’ ability to understand emerging regulatory barriers. Moreover, the WTO’s mandate does not extend to providing regulatory policy advice to its members. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, by contrast, don’t have such limitations, and both maintain a permanent on-the-ground presence and continuous engagement with national authorities, generating real-time information on economic policies and regulatory developments.

The risk is not simply the erosion of the rules-based trading system, but its replacement by a world characterized by geoeconomic fragmentation, regulatory opacity and increasingly intrusive forms of digital governance. To avert that outcome, the G7 could champion stronger cooperation between the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank to improve transparency, monitor digital trade-related regulations and promote greater regulatory interoperability across jurisdictions.

Quantum and Emerging Dual-Use Technologies

The 2025 G7 presidency solidified AI and quantum as critical technologies. As these dual-use technologies increasingly shape global power structures in a “winner-takes-most” environment, the intersection of trade measures, defence investments and commercial strategies threatens to stifle innovation and impede international cooperation.

Against this backdrop, the upcoming Évian summit presents a vital inflection point for the G7 to establish a cohesive global governance framework. Leaders should focus on two strategic pillars:

• Regulatory alignment and security: By leveraging the G7 Central Banks’ Quantum Technologies Working Group analytical framework and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s recent recommendation on quantum technologies, the G7 can harmonize risk assessments, safeguard resilient supply chains and maintain financial stability.
• Inclusive talent pipelines: The severe shortage of specialized AI and quantum talent constrains growth. Building on the “Kananaskis Common Vision for the Future of Quantum Technologies” and the "AI for Prosperity" statement, the G7 should prioritize domestic capacity building as well as complementary action beyond its borders. Investing in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education within the developing world may simultaneously secure a future talent pipeline and bridge the digital divide.

Proactive governance is a geopolitical necessity to ensure technology development supports economic resilience and serves humanity. For technology on the strategic frontier, the Évian summit presents a critical opportunity for G7 introspection and cooperative action.