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British PM to visit France for first summit in 4 years

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will visit France on March 10th for the first British-French summit in more than four years, the French presidency and Downing Street said on Wednesday.

Published: 11 January 2023 17:49 CET

British PM to visit France for first summit in 4 years

French President Emmanuel Macron meets with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on the sidelines of the COP27 climate summit (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP)

The planned trip comes amid signs Sunak is trying to put UK relations with the European Union on a surer footing following Brexit and years of rocky ties between France and the UK.

French media has also reported that Britain’s King Charles III will visit France in March, although this has not been confirmed.

“It will be the first meeting of its kind since 2018,” the French presidency and a Sunak spokesman said.

It would be “an opportunity for the leaders to deepen cooperation between the UK and France in a huge range of areas, including security, climate and energy, the economy, migration, youth and shared foreign policy goals.”

The two countries have enjoyed warmer ties since Sunak took the helm, after years of acrimony under his predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron held a cordial first meeting in early November on the sidelines of the UN climate summit in Egypt.

Paris and London have since signed a deal for Britain to pay France more than €72 million to increase the number of security forces patrolling France’s northern beaches and prevent migrant boat crossings in the Channel.

A record 45,000 migrants crossed one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes in dinghies from mainland Europe to the UK in 2022, British authorities say.

The issue has become a huge political problem for the Conservative government, which has promised to bring down illegal immigration and crack down on the smuggling gangs organising the crossings.

During the March 10 summit, “you can certainly expect that issue of small boats given it’s high on the priority list for the prime minister,” Sunak’s spokesman told reporters.

One of the worst public rows between Johnson and Macron came in November 2021, when 27 migrants drowned in the Channel.

Tensions had already soared months earlier when Britain struck an alliance with the United States and Australia that saw Sydney cancel a lucrative order for French submarines.

But Macron in November said he hoped to reinforce defence cooperation with the UK.

Britain and France in February last year signed a deal to jointly develop new cruise and anti-ship missiles, a plan that had been on the cards since a 2010 treaty on close defence ties.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.