Security tightens in France ahead of the G7 summit

US President Donald Trump will meet with Middle Eastern leaders and attend a working session with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the Group of Seven summit in France next week.

France is tightening security ahead of the summit deploying thousands of police and gendarmerie officers to stave off any potential threats.

A French National Gendarmerie patrol boat speeds across Lake Geneva near to the Evian Resort's Hotel Royal. Security is tight ahead of the G7 summit with focus on air, land and sea.

Capt. Nicolas Belec, Commander of anti-drone unit at G7 summit said, "To fight against, to counter UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) threat, we are bringing light systems and heavy systems. The heavy systems are made of sensors that will detect all kinds of drones. It's part of radars, optics, radio frequency system. By this we can detect every type of drone. And then for the neutralisation, for mitigation, we have different types of systems, like jammers for example."

French and Swiss authorities are set to impose a week of pandemic-like border restrictions while US President Donald Trump and other leaders attend the G7 summit which starts Monday.

But if they did that organisers fear potential violent protests.

Robin Hedz a local resident said "The last time in 2003, it was really a mess in Geneva. They broke a lot of shop and everything, that's why. But I think the G7, it's absurd. You know, I don't know why they do that at Evian-les-Bains. They can have a meeting on a secret base or somewhere they don't get some trouble or interrupting people, who work and stuff like that. Yeah, I'm pretty, I pretty agree with the demonstration tomorrow, because things have to change."

Topping the agenda at the G7 summit - global security issues, the Middle East, Ukraine and access to critical resources. But one analyst expects Trump will test the willingness of partners to back the United States in its long-term competition with China.

Cedric Dupont International relations professor at Geneva Graduate Institute said "The hidden agenda is to try to, how to work, to govern the world, short of China. They're concerned about security issues in regions like the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, Russia and Ukraine. They are concerned about the technological race, AI, critical minerals. And they're concerned about also, a bit less, but also a bit about the environment, how you actually move from the brown economy to the green economy."