Tribune. Brexit is no longer an opinion but a fact. The year 2020 ended with a snatch agreement. The question that arises today is now that of the future of relations between the United Kingdom and the continent, and particularly of the Franco-British relations to which we, entrepreneurs, students, residents, teachers, researchers, civil servants today committed to fruitful and intense Franco-British cooperation, we are particularly attached.
The Franco-British relationship will be what we choose to do with it tomorrow. We already know that those who will live the longest with the consequences of Brexit are not the ones who voted for it.
While the political forces will be tempted to pit public opinion against each other – the British to prove the benefits of their regained sovereignty, the Europeans to demonstrate the impasse of exiting the single market – we will need a will. strong to preserve this historic and vital link between our two nations. Let’s not sink into the ease of bashing, nor into the inevitability of simply turning the page.
The ferment of our relationships
We have lived through these endless divorce discussions painfully. This is the reason why it seems essential to us today to recall what makes the ferment of our relations between our two countries:
– English is the language chosen by 95.7% first by French secondary school students (5,367,700 students, source Reciprocal Knowledge Exchange Networks, RERS, 2018);
– London is the metropolis (9 million inhabitants) closest to Paris, two hours fifteen by train;
– After the United States, the United Kingdom is the country with the most subsidiaries of French companies (3,600, according to INSEE);
– The United Kingdom is the first partner country for collaborative research projects, the second in number of co-publications. More than 3,000 French researchers are based in the United Kingdom, according to the CNRS;
– France and the United Kingdom are the only two nuclear powers on the European continent, with very interoperable army formats, in particular thanks to the Combined Joint Expeditionary Force, and covering all defense missions;
– After France, the United Kingdom is the European country (excluding Russia) with the largest maritime exclusive economic zone: 6.8 million km² to be monitored;
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