Sunak and Macron reshape UK-France ties

• Published date: 09 March 2023
• Publication title: The Korea Times

French-U.K. relations were often in the "deep freeze" during the prime ministerships of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, yet this Friday will see the first bilateral summit between London and Paris in five years.

Theresa May was the last U.K. prime minister that French President Emmanuel Macron met with for such a summit, yet even then there was little personal rapport between the two leaders. Predictably, this did little to break the substantive impasse in the U.K.'s then-EU exit negotiations in 2018.

However, it appears that the latest resident of 10 Downing Street, Rishi Sunak, does have significantly warmer ties with Macron. Both assumed their nation's highest public office at a very early age, having had prior jobs as finance ministers, and before that having earned fortunes in the financial services industry.

So Sunak hopes, in this relatively auspicious context, that he can forge a much better relationship with the still-young French president, creating a new era of "entente cordiale." This may be furthered by a potential state visit for King Charles III to France in late March or next month.

The omens for an upturn in ties also appear particularly bright after the agreement over the Northern Ireland protocol last Monday between London, Brussels and the EU 27. If signed off by legislators, this would remove a huge blockage in U.K. relations with Europe.

Specific issues that will be on the agenda at Friday's summit include deepening bilateral cooperation in areas such as climate and energy, the economy, migration and wider shared foreign policy and security goals like Ukraine. There is potential upside in many of these issues from a stronger relationship.

Positive as this all is, however, bilateral ties remain challenging in numerous areas in the post-Brexit era. During those long Brexit divorce negotiations, France had perhaps the most hard-line stance on the U.K.'s exit from the EU club.

This reflects the complex, contradictory relationship that Paris has long had with London in the context of EU affairs. The ardently pro-Brussels Macron, who believes Brexit to be an act of political vandalism to the continent, was frequently accused by U.K. ministers of holding up progress in negotiations.

Macron's Brexit positioning, including his robust stance on precluding future U.K. access to the Single Market, was reinforced by broader French plans to pitch Paris as a competing financial center to London which began in earnest under the presidency of Francois Hollande...