French and Swiss authorities will impose a week of pandemic-like border restrictions as US President Donald Trump and other leaders attend a G7 summit starting on Monday while organisers fear potentially violent protests.
The summit of some of the world’s richest nations from June 15-17 in the French town of Evian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva is meant to discuss the Middle East, Ukraine and global economic imbalances.
In nearby Geneva, Switzerland, business owners and local leaders want to avoid a repeat of violent protests that smashed storefronts on the sidelines of the G8 summit in 2003, when Russia was in the club of nations.
Protests are nothing new around such elite gatherings. This time, activists want to demonstrate frustration with Trump’s leadership on issues as diverse as tariffs, the war in Iran and the climate, or even highlight his past ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The activist groups include environmentalists, feminists and anti-capitalists.
The No G7 coalition of anti-capitalism groups called for a “large-scale internationalist mobilisation against this meeting.”
Businesses have been boarding up storefronts in Geneva, a centre for United Nations offices, while some institutions like the World Trade Organization, which faced anti-capitalist protests in Seattle in the 1990s, are closing offices and instructing staff to work remotely.
Switzerland, a rich Alpine country, is not among the G7 membership that includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US.
G7 also brings airspace restrictions
France and Switzerland have struck a military cooperation agreement on G7 summit security. The arriving leaders will pass through the airport in Geneva, which is 95 percent surrounded by France and connected to the rest of Switzerland by a strip of land.
The Swiss government said the army will deploy some 4,000 personnel to support police. Operations will include airspace restrictions, patrols on Lake Geneva and roadway restrictions. Seven of the 35 roadway border crossings will remain open. Geneva is also closing a major park where activists wanted to congregate.
France will deploy more than 13,000 police and gendarmerie officers to ensure security in the summit area just over the border. Over 800 French border control officers will be active, up from about 60 normally.
