Switzerland has sealed most of the road crossings on its border with France around Geneva ahead of the G7 summit in nearby Évian-les-Bains, a security clampdown that has upended daily routines for the tens of thousands of people who live and work across the frontier. Of the 35 crossings between the canton of Geneva and France, 25 have been closed since Thursday afternoon, with the remainder kept open under reinforced checks.
Seven crossings are being kept open around the clock with enhanced security controls, while the rest — including forest paths and minor lanes — have been physically sealed. At Hermance, on the lakeshore between Geneva and France, authorities reinforced the boundary at 6 p.m. on Thursday with a barrier and a wire fence, a striking image in a region where the border is normally all but invisible in everyday life.
Évian sits about 30 kilometers from Geneva on the southern shore of Lake Geneva, close enough that the summit's security perimeter spills across the Swiss side of the border. Geneva's airport and transport links make the canton a natural staging point for delegations, and Swiss authorities have coordinated closely with France on a lockdown that effectively extends the summit's footprint into Switzerland.
The disruption is being felt acutely in border communities. Tennis matches and rugby fixtures scheduled on the French side have been postponed, farmers have been cut off from fields across the line, and two families in Hermance whose children attend school in France have had to make alternative arrangements until the border reopens on June 19, with the nearest available crossing some five kilometers away.
Authorities have urged residents to telework where possible and adjusted cross-border public-transport schedules to cope with the closures, which fall on a region that depends on fluid daily movement between Switzerland and France. The Geneva area is home to a large population of cross-border commuters who cross in both directions for work each day.
Such measures are a familiar, if disruptive, feature of hosting a modern leaders' summit, where the security cordon around a small host town ripples outward across an entire region. For the G7's three days in Évian, much of the choreography is happening not at the summit site but along the quiet country roads and lakeside lanes that have been closed to keep it secure.
The crossings are due to reopen on June 19, two days after the summit concludes, when the barriers come down and the border around Geneva returns to its usual near-seamless rhythm.