President Hollande’s visit to London

Thoughts on the French president François Hollande’s visit to London yesterday, and on the many ministerial visits over the past few weeks between France and the UK.

Transcript

“I wanted to talk to you this week about the visit by President François Hollande to London yesterday and also some of the other active cooperation that we have now got going with the new French government.

“President Hollande had talks and lunch with David Cameron in Downing Street. They covered the essential cooperation that we are continuing in the area of defence, also in energy, both nuclear energy but also the renewables area where there’s a lot of work together between French and British companies. They talked about current crises in Syria, in Iran, in the Sahel, where Britain and France are working closely together.

“And they covered Europe as they both explained during their press conference. We both share an interest in growth resuming in the Europe economy, we both share an interest in a strong successful Eurozone and the two leaders were able to discuss ways of achieving those joint objectives.

“This visit comes at a time of real activity. Last week we had two visits by Foreign Secretary William Hague – one for a bilateral meeting and lunch with his French counterpart Laurent Fabius, and then a second one for the big Syria conference hosted by France very successfully on the 6th of July. In fact on the 6th we had four British Ministers in France, because in addition to William Hague we had the Minister of State in the FCO Alistair Burt also at the Syria conference, we had Caroline Spelman, the Minister for the Environment and Rural Affairs, visiting her agriculture and environment counterparts in France, and we had a Minister from the Treasury Mark Hoban at a big economic conference at Aix en Provence, talking about the economic issues that both countries face.

“This level of activity continues, and for the month of July, later in the month, the French defence Minister M. Le Drihan will be in London for talks with Mr Philip Hammond, our Defence Secretary, and even before then we shall have fighter jets of the Royal Air Force in the big air parade during the 14th of July celebrations, so we’re in a period of really intense activity at the moment.”