The French president wants to stop his U.S. counterpart from bailing out of France’s G7 summit.
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron is considering one of the grandest displays of French statecraft in his diplomatic arsenal: a private dinner with U.S. President Donald Trump at the Palace of Versailles.
The Elysée Palace is preparing a dinner for two in the opulent residence of the Sun King Louis XIV to coincide with the summit of the Group of Seven leading economies later this month, according to two French officials familiar with the preparations.
The big idea would be to play on Trump’s penchant for gaudy gilded interiors to help guarantee the U.S. president remains engaged on the core issues preoccupying Europe, such as Russia’s war in Ukraine and the economic impact of the conflict in Iran.
Trump is due to visit the Alpine spa resort of Évian-les-Bains on June 15–17 at a moment of heightened tensions, with little prospect of a U.S.-Iran breakthrough in sight.
The president has promised he will fly to France after watching a series of cage fights on the White House lawn, but the French side is not taking anything for granted and wants to make sure he doesn’t pull out of the meeting early.
“I believe he’s just about confirmed for the G7,” said a person close to the French president.
Given Trump’s unpredictability, the person stressed that the dinner wasn’t confirmed and other options were available. “Everything is possible, there’s also a golf course at Evian.”
European leaders have spent nearly a decade trying to come up a formula for managing Trump. One lesson is that flattery, pageantry and a touch of royal splendor can help smooth relations with a president who has long viewed institutions like the G7 with skepticism.
But with the U.S. administration struggling to exit its confrontation with Iran, it’s unclear whether Trump — who has repeatedly accused NATO allies of letting him down in the Middle East — has much interest in spending time with leaders from Europe, Canada and Japan.
A lawmaker from Macron’s liberal Renaissance party summed up the summit as something Europeans “just need to get through.”
“We need to avoid a situation like in Canada last year, when Trump left [the G7] early, or a crisis over Greenland,” said the lawmaker who, like others quoted here, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Macron’s dinner plans.
Keeping Trump on track
Foremost on the mind of French officials is the need to prevent Trump from walking out of the G7 summit, or blowing the whole thing up.
As first reported by POLITICO, Macron moved the summit’s date — originally scheduled to start on June 14 — so that the U.S. president could attend the cage fights planned around his 80th birthday. French organizers have also tailored the list of guests with Trump in mind.
The Versailles dinner, if it happens, would take place on June 17, the summit’s final day, and would be a more of an intimate affair than the state banquet hosted for King Charles III, which drew nearly 200 guests.
“You need to dazzle him and suck up to him,” said a European official, noting that Macron and Trump “have already done the Eiffel Tower … What’s left, if not the Hall of Mirrors at the Versailles Palace?”
European leaders have observed that the most successful Trump visits have involved detours with royalty — preferably in palaces — such as dinner with the king and queen of the Netherlands during last year’s NATO summit in The Hague. Similarly, Trump appeared genuinely impressed by his royal welcome at Windsor Palace in the U.K.
Macron learnt those lessons early on. As host of the G7 summit in the Atlantic seaside resort of Biarritz in 2019, the French president appeared to avert disaster when he improvised a private lunch with Trump, who had arrived threatening fresh trade tariffs against France.
Expect the unexpected
But in the wake of Trump’s global tariff war and his disregard for the opinions of allies on the wars in Iran and Ukraine, there are doubts in Europe over whether France’s diplomatic tradecraft and Macron’s finesse may actually achieve anything.
“Flattery is effective only as part of a power dynamic,” said the same European official quoted above, noting that Europeans got Trump to back down on Greenland with a mixture of adulation and power moves. “Or if there is some sort of immediate gain for the United States, or the Trump family.”
“And that’s one thing we can’t do,” added the official. “We can’t give Trump a château in France.”
Still, there are hopes that the G7 gathering might nevertheless pay dividends.
According to a former minister, the summit could be an opportunity to “get Trump to recommit to the club.” The minister also noted that the French president had focused the summit preparations on a theme close to Trump’s heart: global imbalances — that’s coded language for China gaming the international trade landscape by using subsidies to rack up massive surpluses with the U.S. and the EU.
But the G7 organizers know they will have to expect the unexpected.
“It’s very volatile,” said the same person close to the French president. “If the Strait of Hormuz is opened up and there’s a deal with Iran, it changes everything.”
Freedom of navigation in the strait is a universal concern, and French officials note the U.S. administration is fully capable of shifting blame for the impasse onto its European allies. Not only has Trump repeatedly blamed Europeans for not helping on Iran, but U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month called on NATO allies to work on “a Plan B” to open the Strait of Hormuz even if the war is still raging.
There are other potential flashpoints too. In a U-turn from earlier plans, Macron has invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the G7 summit. But given the fraught relationship between the Trump and the wartime leader, the move brings its own dose of uncertainty.
“There’s always a share of risk with the Trump administration,” said a European diplomat. “They are not afraid of conflict.”