G7 Foreign Ministers Meet in Paris After Last-Minute Move From Marseille Amid Unrest

The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrial democracies opened a two-day meeting in Paris on Monday that was relocated from Marseille at the last minute, a shift diplomats linked to weeks of street unrest in the southern port city rather than to the crowded agenda of wars and crises the ministers had gathered to discuss.

The gathering, the French presidency's fourth and final ministerial-level G7 session of the year, brought together top diplomats from the United States, France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan for sessions on Ukraine, the Middle East, and a cluster of conflicts and humanitarian emergencies stretching from Haiti to Sudan. It was also U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's first trip abroad since Republicans suffered sweeping losses in the Nov. 3 midterm elections that cost the party control of both chambers of Congress.

A Late Switch to the Quai d'Orsay

The meeting had been set for months to take place at the Palais du Pharo overlooking Marseille's old port. Instead, ministers convened at the Hôtel du Ministre, the 19th-century seat of France's Foreign Ministry on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris, after organizers notified delegations of the change roughly two weeks beforehand.

Reuters, citing three diplomats briefed on the decision, reported that the switch followed roughly six weeks of nationwide demonstrations in France, including an Oct. 17 protest day that ended in looting and clashes with police in several cities, with some of the worst violence in Marseille itself. Some delegations had already arranged logistics in the city, and it was unclear whether any of those costs would be reimbursed, the diplomats said.

Italy's Foreign Ministry, whose own October notice to journalists had listed the Marseille venue, confirmed the Nov. 9-10 dates held even as the location shifted. French officials offered a narrower public explanation. At a briefing on Nov. 5, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Paris was chosen for "logistical and operational reasons," noting that the Paris Peace Forum opens immediately after the ministerial and that holding both events in the capital would let them "run smoothly." Asked whether the move signaled anything about the substance of the talks, the spokesperson said there would be "no change in terms of ambition, in terms of program, or in terms of priorities."

An Agenda Crowded With Crises

According to the French ministry's own account of the program, Monday's sessions included a dedicated working meeting on Ukraine, to which Kyiv's foreign minister was invited, with discussion of financing to help repair the Chornobyl nuclear plant's protective containment arch, which was damaged by a Russian drone strike. A separate session was set aside for the Middle East, followed by a roundtable on crises in the Horn of Africa, Sudan, Haiti and the Indo-Pacific.

Ministers also used the first day to launch what France called a "G7+" network of ports cooperating against drug trafficking and to present the French portion of an international anti-narcotics plan. A session on humanitarian logistics drew the World Food Programme's executive director, while artificial intelligence, a newer subject for G7 diplomats, was also on the docket. Roughly 200 journalists had requested accreditation to cover the meeting, the ministry said, and five additional countries were invited to join portions of the talks as outreach partners.

France has signaled the Paris meeting, like the G7's foreign-ministerial gathering in March, is unlikely to produce a formal joint communiqué. A chairman's statement, the device Rubio used to close a G7-adjacent foreign ministers' meeting he hosted in Atlanta in late October, is the more likely outcome, reflecting how difficult it has become for the seven governments to agree on common language over Ukraine, the Middle East and trade.

Rubio's First Trip After the Midterms

For the American delegation, the meeting carried a domestic subtext. Rubio flew to Paris for the Nov. 8-10 visit just days after Republicans' losses handed Democrats control of the House and Senate, a result widely read abroad as a rebuke of President Donald Trump's handling of foreign policy, including the continuing war between the United States and Iran and the stalled effort to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The State Department described the trip in spare terms, saying only that Rubio would travel to "advance American interests in engagements with his G7 counterparts," according to wire-service reporting on the announcement. Rubio has sought to preempt the idea that the election outcome will reshape White House policy abroad. At a G7 foreign ministers' session he chaired in Atlanta on Oct. 31, he argued that control of Congress does not change the executive branch's authority to set foreign policy, and said remaining in the administration through the end of Trump's term "has always been my plan," dismissing speculation that he might leave to run for president in 2028.

"Il n'y aura pas de changement en termes d'ambition, en termes de programme, en termes de priorités" — there will be no change in ambition, in program or in priorities, a French Foreign Ministry spokesperson said of the move to Paris.

What Comes Next

European counterparts arrived in Paris looking for clarity on how far the midterm result will constrain Washington, particularly on Ukraine funding and on pressing Gulf allies over the Strait of Hormuz, issues that produced open friction between Rubio and other G7 ministers at their last in-person session in March. The Ukraine session's focus on financing Chornobyl's repairs gives European governments a concrete, near-term test of whether that cooperation holds regardless of the political turbulence in Washington.

Ministers are scheduled to wrap up Tuesday afternoon with a closing press conference chaired by France's Jean-Noël Barrot, after which the diplomatic corps assembled in Paris will shift, with little pause, into the Paris Peace Forum that France scheduled to follow directly on the G7 ministerial's heels.