Institut Montaigne NAC2605-01 - Economic Security and Supply-Chain Resilience: Building the 2026 G7 Agenda POLICY PAPER - MAY 2026

 

Institut Montaigne

NAC2605-01

Economic Security and Supply-Chain Resilience: 

Building the 2026 G7 Agenda

POLICY PAPER - MAY 2026

From semiconductors to extraterritoriality, from digital infrastructure to cleantech, and including the new challenges of e-commerce, Institut Montaigne has very early placed the issue of economic security on the French and European agenda. In recent years, virtually every international event has confirmed the strategic importance of such an agenda, one designed to reduce our vulnerabi-lities and regain essential industrial positions. The growing weaponization of interdependencies as instruments of power is becoming increasingly evident.

In the 2020s, driven in large part by Japan’s efforts, the G7 has become the most promising framework for international cooperation on economic security. The upcoming French G7 presidency at the Évian summit in June 2026 offers an opportunity to launch genuine strategic coordination among member states, which face similar challenges and are developing broadly compatible responses. Even if the deteriorating context of transatlantic relations is not conducive to such ambition, the reality of the challenges posed by China argues in favor of a common approach: Chinese industrial, trade, and technology policies are, in fact, the main problem that economic security seeks to address.

Since national responses, where they exist, remain insufficient in scale, and Europe still struggles to coordinate effectively, a shared G7 agenda represents the most effective path forward. Commissioned to reflect on this issue, Institut Montaigne has sought to help identify a realistic and concrete way ahead.

Among the areas of cooperation highlighted in this note, the creation of a common G7 market for access to critical materials appears particularly promising. By fostering the development of strategic partnerships both among G7 countries and between the G7 and third countries, such a market would provide a safeguard against the risk of supply denial that currently threatens our companies. It would also address a long-unresolved issue: the pricing of critical materials, which China, as a dominant player, manipulates at will, thereby undermining the viability of new extraction, production, and processing projects.

If building an effective economic security policy must be a national priority, the weaponization of interdependencies demonstrates the need for a truly strategic response; one that involves not only European coordination but also targeted international cooperation among like-minded countries facing similar threats. In this regard, the G7 remains a promise worth fulfilling.

Marie-Pierre de Bailliencourt,

Institut Montaigne’s Managing Director

ECONOMIC SECURITY AND SUPPLY-CHAIN RESILIENCE: BUILDING THE 2026 G7 AGENDA

By Joseph Dellatte & Mathieu Duchâtel

The G7 Leaders’ Summit will take place in Évian-les-Bains from 15 to 17 June. The French presidency has placed economic security at the forefront of preparations for the summit, with “reducing macroeconomic imbalances”, “strengthening economic security,” along with “resilience” and “addressing overcapacity,” defined as key priorities for action. In doing so, France is building on the work of previous G7 presidencies, notably those of the United Kingdom (2021), Japan (2023), Italy (2024), and Canada (2025), during which the G7 successfully elevated economic security from a peripheral concern to a central pillar of international coordination. Given the shared focus on supply chain security across G7 countries, the central challenge of the Évian Summit will be to turn afragmented set of economic security initiatives into coordinated, large-scale action. 

This is a demanding task, as progress remains uneven and the United States is simultaneously advancing its own agenda through multiple parallel channels, complicating alignment. Despite numerous initiatives on supply chain resilience and critical minerals, the shift toward operational coordination is still limited. Without greater convergence, G7 members risk pursuing parallel—and at times competing—strategies that dilute collective impact.

This paper argues that the G7 can nonetheless play a decisive role as a strategic coordination layer, aligning efforts that will continue to evolve beyond its formal structure, and identifies three practical and mutually reinforcing avenues to achieve this.

HOW TO ADVANCE ECONOMIC SECURITY AGENDAS WITHIN THE G7 FRAMEWORK

First, strengthening economic intelligence is essential to enhancing supply chain resilience. While intelligence capabilities will remain largely national, there is significant untapped potential for collaboration. Sharing and benchmarking best practices, investing in advanced data analytics, and developing joint mapping exercises, particularly in underexplored sectors such as chemicals, can substantially improve collective awareness of supply chain  vulnerabilities. 

Existing bilateral and minilateral initiatives demonstrate that cooperation is both feasible and beneficial. The G7 can add value by scaling these efforts, for instance through coordinated identification of supply chain bottlenecks and high-risk actors. Over time, once they have demonstrated their added value to enhancing policymaking effectiveness and strategic foresight, such initiatives could underpin more aligned approaches to export controls, investment screening, and corporate due diligence.

Second, the coordinated introduction of non-price criteria in markets for strategic goods offers on paper a powerful lever to shape global supply chains. Market mechanisms, driven primarily by cost considerations, have contributed to excessive concentration and systemic risk. By integrating criteria such as transparency, diversification, sustainability, trustworthiness and security into public support measures and procurement policies, G7 countries can actively steer markets and respond effectively to Chinese pricing power, which systematically undermines measures on the supply side. The paper argues that practical progress can be achieved without requiring uniformity. 

A pragmatic, sector-specific approach, focused initially on critical minerals, semiconductors, batteries, and steel, can enable interoperability among national tools while preserving flexibility. Through a common resilience vocabulary, shared templates, and structured consultation mechanisms, the G7 can send clear and consistent signals to markets, encouraging investment in diversified and secure supply chains while minimizing unintended disruptions among partners.

Third, advancing project-based cooperation is key to reducing exposure to China’s potentialweaponization of supply chains. Real resilience is built through concrete industrial projects that integrate upstream extraction, midstream processing, financing, offtake agreements, and trusted-partner coordination. Recent initiatives, particularly from the United States,which has rapidly expanded financing and diplomatic enggement in critical minerals,illustrate the scale and ambition required. European and Canadian efforts further demonstrate the importance of combining 

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ECONOMIC SECURITY AND SUPPLY-CHAIN RESILIENCE: BUILDING THE 2026 G7 AGENDA

By Joseph Dellatte & Mathieu Duchâtel

industrial policy, public financing, and international partnerships. However, most projects remain nationally or bilaterally driven, limiting their systemic impact. The example of Franco-Japanese cooperation in rare earths in Lacq highlights the potential of more integrated approaches, where investment, offtake agreements, and strategic coordinationare aligned across borders.

G7 AS STRATEGIC COORDINATOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN RESILIENCE INITIATIVES

The broader landscape is increasingly complex. New frameworks such as critical minerals ministerials and semiconductor alliances are emerging alongside established channels, creating a dense web of overlapping initiatives. While this proliferation reflects the high priority attached to economic security, it also risks inefficiency. In this context, the G7’s comparative advantage lies not in duplicating efforts, but in providing strategic coherence. 

Its unique capacity to align positions while combining economic weight and regulatory capacity should lead its members to use it as an “operating system” for the needed construction of a network of trusted economic security partners.

Achieving this vision will not be without challenges. The war in the Middle East could hijack the summit. There are differences in the approach to China policy, even though all members tend to see China’s trade and industrial practices as the main source of economic security challenges. But the French presidency offers a timely opportunity to advance a common economic security agenda at a time when this agenda is making rapid but incoherent progress in Europe, North America and Japan. By prioritizing practical cooperation on economic intelligence, demand-side measures to create a common market for strategic goods, and critical minerals initiatives, the G7 can establish itself as the coordinating platform of global economic security governance—a space that exists and that no other format has yet been able to fill, even though it is needed by all.