So this is the time of year when I look back at what we’ve achieved and 2014 will stay in my mind a long time as a year of anniversaries. We’ve had the 20th anniversary of the Channel Tunnel, and the Queen unveiled a little plaque to commemorate that at Saint Pancras when she was coming here in June.
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Also, of Eurostar: that train link which has done so much to pull London and Paris closer together, and enable the enormous exchange of people that goes on all the time.
Second anniversary, the 70th anniversary of D-Day, and obviously the State visite of the Queen and the Duke Of Edinburgh, but also the arrival of 600 British veterans (the youngest of whom must be 90 now) and all their helpers on the beaches of Normandy. Absolutely unforgettable moment to hear cries of “Vive la Reine” in the streets of Paris, which was a pretty extraordinary moment.
Then we’ve started to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, with a series of moving events on battlefields around France, and just recently the great #FootballRemembers campaign, remembering back to that moment when British and German troops got out of the trenches and played football together in no man’s land.
And then running through the entire year has been our celebration of the 200th anniversary of this house being bought when Duke of Wellington was ambassador from Pauline, the sister of Napoléon. We’ve had a whole series of different events, some of them about the past and the world of 1814, some of them very cutting-edge, and looking at innovative, creative ideas where Britain and France can work together. All of the podcasts from those events are available on our social networking sites, and they are well worth a look.
So it’s been a very special year. A year in which economic progress has continued between us, we’ve signed very important agreements for French companies to build a new nuclear power station in the UK for example ; where we’ve continued to provide services to many many thousands of British people coming to France on holiday. We’re working right now to make sure that the difficulties with a lot of migrants at Calais aren’t interrupting the flow of British visitors to and through Calais.
When I look forward to the new year, a lot of work will go on in many areas. I suppose two of the big events for us will be the election in the UK in May and then the enormous climate conference where Paris plays host to the world in December to try and get a climate agreement. Lots and lots I will continue to talk about in 2015.