France’s overseas trade minister will visit London on Wednesday in what is being hailed in Paris as a return to business as usual between the two countries after Brexit and the cross-Channel “tensions” of Boris Johnson’s leadership.
It will be Olivier Becht’s first official visit to the UK since his appointment last year and comes after a warmer relationship was signalled with the meeting of Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris last month.
Speaking before his visit about the relationship between the two countries, Becht said there had been a change in mindset: “From a trade point of view, relations between France and the UK have always been quite active. There was a hiccup after Brexit and there were a certain number of tensions with the government of Boris Johnson, but we have moved on.
“In comparison to the government of Boris Johnson we can see there has been a change of état d’esprit [frame of mind] and a new willingness to continue to do business together.
“We are neighbours and allies and we know we are confronted with the same challenges today. If we want to stand up to the economic and political competition from China, and if we want to have European autonomy and not depend on the US – and even if the UK is not part of the EU I’m sure it has the same aims – we have to remain solid partners.”
As well as a working lunch in London with the UK’s business and trade secretary, Kemi Badenoch, Becht will meet the directors of major banking and financial institutions in the City.
He will seek to reassure investors that Macron’s manifesto reform programme will continue despite his government’s lack of a parliamentary majority and three months of strikes, blockades and occasionally violent clashes between police and protesters over the contested pension bill.
“People who think France is burning have come to that conclusion after watching three pictures on the television,” Becht said.
“The reality is that those fires are mostly confined to places in Paris. From time to time in France we have industrial movements that are a part of our history. But it’s not a revolution. It’s not because there are demonstrations that there is a revolution.”
He added: “At one moment or another, the protests will stop; there will be a dialogue. We will move to the next project and we will build.”
Sunak and Macron met in Paris on 10 March in what was seen as a bridge-building summit after years of tensions linked to Brexit and outbreaks of Anglo-French political sniping. It was the first UK-French summit in five years after the turbulent tenures of Johnson and Liz Truss.
Becht said his visit was a follow-on to that meeting and the Windsor framework, the post-Brexit legal agreement between the European Union and the UK passed by parliament in March and aimed at addressing the problem of the movement of goods between the single market and the UK via Northern Ireland.
“At the Paris summit our two countries reaffirmed their wish to cooperate and I’m going to the UK to reinforce those economic, business and industrial links further,” Becht said.
“This is the message I will be taking to Kemi Badenoch and it comes in the context of the Windsor framework and a new willingness of the UK to re-engage constructive relations with the European Union in financial and economic matters.”
While France marked a record public trade deficit of €164bn (£145bn) last year, financial services in the country rose – aided by Brexit relocations. French trade with the UK plunged by 20% between 2019 and 2020 as a combined effect of Brexit and the pandemic, but climbed to a record €63.3bn in 2022.
Becht said the latest figures showed France remained the UK’s eighth biggest customer and its sixth biggest supplier and that Britain remained the third biggest investor in France.
He will also visit the French Lycée and the University College London Centre for Artificial Intelligence, where a joint team of British and French researchers is engaged in an international partnership.
“We are two peoples with a history that has often been difficult, but we are resilient people,” Becht said.
“We have always had difficult challenges, and Brexit is one for the British people, but we have always overcome the challenges we have faced and come out of it stronger. And I think it will be the same this time for our two countries.”
