Emmanuel Macron and Rishi Sunak sealed this Friday a “new beginning” and a “new ambition” in the Franco-British relationship, with an agreement on the thorny issue of the fight against illegal immigration, after years of estrangement fueled by Brexit.
It is a moment of reunion, reconnection and new beginnings (….) It is the height of a new ambition”, launched the French president.
It was during a joint press conference after the first summit between France and the United Kingdom since 2018.
“A new beginning, a renewed agreement” (A new beginning, a renewed agreement), added the British prime minister in reference to the “cordial understanding” that marks the relationship between the two countries for a century. They turned the page on the tensions between former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Paris, in a context of recurring misunderstandings between the two sides of the Channel.
“A great friend, without a doubt”
The air had been further charged by his short-lived successor, Liz Truss, who, for a time, refused to say whether Emmanuel Macron was “friend or foe” of the UK. “A great friend, without a doubt”, resolved Rishi Sunak, in an interview with the newspaper Le Figaro. Expression that he later repeated in the France 2 newspaper.
Fifteen days before a state visit to France by King Carlos III on his first trip abroad, the two leaders made a series of complicity gestures, exchanging the shirts of their national rugby teams that will play the Six O’clock Tournament on Saturday Nations, or sharing anecdotes about soccer.
From Brexit to the pandemic and a bitter dispute over alliances in the Asia-Pacific region, multiple crises had disrupted the tradition of annual summits. Most of them are over, especially since Rishi Sunak has just concluded an agreement with the European Union on Northern Ireland after months of fighting.
Source: BFM TV
