New Generations
New Connections between Britain and France
Report of a seminar 24th November 2004
Introduction
Here was a group of “Thirtysomethings” most of whom had
never met each other before. They were not quite randomly
selected. They were chosen with some regard to gender,
experience and institutional background. Coming from
business, the arts, academe, politics and government,
they represented a reasonable cross section of the
educated and successful of their age cohort in both
countries. How much should they have had in common?
After spending barely seven hours together, they bonded.
They were hungry; they wanted more. A “group dynamic” had
been created, someone said. Participants in the seminar
asked for further contact, another occasion to meet, more
exchanges, an ongoing conversation between contemporaries
Even allowing for a certain euphoria that builds up at
such events – akin, perhaps, to the esprit that makes
diplomatic breakthrough possible in tightly-timetabled
international conferences – this appetite for extending
and deepening links was remarkable. Perhaps it
demonstrated that Franco-British dealings in general are
in deficit. Over them – the co-chairmen of the Franco
British Council, Lord Radice and Jacques Viot nodded in
agreement – hung the shadow of (British) euroscepticism.
Much depended, they said, on age and the reference points
that came from personal experience of politics. Denis
MacShane, the British minister, referred to personalities
(Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath) who may now have faded
from consciousness. Yves Censi, the French
parliamentarian, noted a distinct generational sense in
France among the sons and daughters of soixante-huitard:
was there, he wondered, an analogous British sense of
belonging together in time?
Perhaps not, but the seminar showed there exists a
common, age-specific wish to reach over and make contact
– whatever parents and forbears might have done. We
travel and visit and deal with one another, but beneath
the surface of banal connexions there exists a potential
for deeper contact, friendship and exchange; for swapping
notes (observed Jonathan Portes) on such common anxieties
as pension provision.
That word – exchange - came up a lot during the day. It
dominated the recommendations for follow-up action
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participants were asked to make at the end of
proceedings. Was it mere curiosity or did this group
demonstrate some special talent pour le couplage – that
ambiguous phrase leading to badinage (is that any longer
a French word?) between the politicians, Yves Censi and
Denis MacShane, who joked about its application to the
relationship between British prime minister Margaret
Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterand.
Perhaps our seminar showed only that closer contact
sharpens the desire for more intimacy; that, jolted out
of everyday and national existences, people (at least
these Thirtysomethings) relished the opportunity to learn
about each other and compare notes on their experience.
Did our day together serve to alter perceptions, to tear
veils (those coverings later a subject of some anguished
debate on both sides) or to dissolve stereotypes?
The culprit, on the British side at least, was easy to
identify. It was the media, especially the UK’s national
newspaper press. The seminar heard bitter complaint about
the treatment of France and of the European Union in
British newspapers and in broadcasting, of reporting that
had started to merge dishonestly into opinionating, of
prejudice and, as bad, great gaps in coverage. Little was
heard at the seminar about French media, though some
participants worried about a tendency to “blame
Brussels”. In the UK the media were judged to have
abdicated responsibility for leading the public and
articulating a sense of national purpose and future
betterment. But Benedicte Paviot said less-thancourageous politicians bore some responsibility, too.
At events such as this, said Yves Censi, we should
maximise that which unites us and marginalise that which
separates us. Age did not seem to belong to the latter
category. Yet it was hard to pick up any sense that this
age cohort was more or less attuned to events and
movements in the respective countries now. Had a group of
Thirtysomethings convened two decades ago, would they
have produced a radically different agenda of divergences
and convergences? Certain issues have risen up the agenda
of public attention, notably migration and multiculturalism; our seminar discussed them energetically.
But it was hard to see, in France or the UK, an agespecific concern about, for example, social cohesion,
fundamentalism and the need to protect core civic values;
these themes preoccupy thinking people of all ages.
Similarities, Differences and Shared Influences:
Perceptions of a New Generation of the Economy
The seminar began on a note of difference. In the UK the
phrase “Thatcher’s children” has been used of the
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generation passing into adulthood during the 1980s and
early 1990s. Perhaps our seminar did pick up, from the UK
side at least, some sense that this generation – now in
its thirties – had acquired a fatalistic sense of the
state’s incapacity and the futility of attempts to
intervene in markets. It’s very much not a sense French
men and women of a similar age share.
Debate was lively. Liberalism vs etatisme became one of
the slogans of the day. Under the Blair government UK
policy, said Denis MacShane, rested upon “flexibility”,
the expansion of small and medium enterprise and the rest
of the Lisbon agenda. We wanted, he said, fewer
directions out of Brussels; the view was not unknown in
France Yves Censi drily noted.
And this was the consensus in the UK, said David Cameron
MP. There is more agreement in the UK on the bases of
policy than in France or the United States, he argued.
Here we concur on the primacy of market economics and the
central role of private ownership in economic life. Of
course the parties divided over tax, regulation and the
extent of the state’s role in national life; but the
British, left, right and centre, were wedded to
liberalism.
William Vereker put the point in stronger terms. Between
France and the UK existed “fundamental differences” about
the state and political economy. Take corporate
ownership. On one side of the Channel large French
companies dominated the market while in the UK the
economy was open to German, French and American
ownership; in London, the lights were kept on courtesy of
EdF and no one bothered. In France, however, the recent
introduction of private capital had not wrested French
energy concerns from their close links with the state or
the trade unions. Even an ostensibly right-of-centre
politician such as the former finance minister Nicholas
Sarkozy believed in market intervention by government and
“national champions”. The cost to France was high, Mr
Vereker argued. Consumer energy prices were above those
in the UK. And tax. Young, energetic French people
migrated, not least to London, to avoid punitive
taxation.
These remarks caused a stir, among participants from
both countries. Dogmatic belief in competition had
undermined economic confidence in the UK, said Catherine
Fieschi, and UK consumers had lost out through the
privatisation of the railways; now a damaging,
competitive model was being extended to health.
UK railways were “a disaster” according to Anwar Akhtar.
Private markets could not deliver a safe or cohesive
society. He cited the positive role played by a state
agency, the Arts Council, in music and culture. Some
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public sector leaders, however, continued “recklessly to
cheerlead the private sector”. Beware generalisations,
John Edward chipped in. In Scotland, water had never been
privatised.
However, James Tugendhat rejected black and white models
of public-private sectors for both France and the UK. The
idea that French companies were featherbedded was
nonsense; on the basis of his own experience some of them
were judged “ruthless”. Pierre-Antoine de Selancy took a
similar view: strong forces of economic convergence were
at work in the world. Both French and British economies
faced similar problems of flexibility, employment and
growth and companies in both countries realised, or ought
to realise, that their staff would only add value if they
were committed, and managed accordingly. Pascal Rigaud –
noting his personal experience of working in France for a
UK-owned company – wanted more exchanges within and
between companies on either side of the Channel.
Addressing a contemporary problem of French public
policy, he wondered about statutory restrictions on
weekly hours of work: the 35-hour scheme might inhibit
the effort to reclaim a sense of the value of work.
Eluned Haf, also reflecting on personal experience of
work inside and outside the UK, worried about too rigid
divisions between public and private sectors and urged
the need for partnership and a better division of labour
between business and government.
Now the French trained their heavy guns on William
Vereker’s contention that the British economy was in a
better state than the French, thanks to Thatcherite
liberalisation. You are consuming our nuclear energy,
Arnaud Leparmentier, noted, referring to the importation
of electricity into the UK from France. Liberalisation in
energy markets had led to shortages in the UK and the
botched privatisation of British Energy had had to be
unwound. As for rail, the industry depended on government
subsidies. That said, things were changing in France.
Perhaps, he mused, the broad-bottomed Gaullist-inspired
consensus about energy, especially France’s nuclear
programme, would come to an end with the privatisation of
EdF.
While urging discussants to move beyond a “Manichean
vision” of public and private sectors, Jeannette Bougrab
explored the role of the French state in building
infrastructure and pumping investment into sector, such
as rail, where the private sector had in the past proved
deficient.
Yet you, said Pierre Razoux, indicating in the general
direction of the British participants, believe in the
market while we believe in people. He told a story based
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on his experience of working in the Ministry of Defence
in Whitehall about the remarkable tolerance of his
colleagues towards “hot-desking” – a symbol of how UK
employers tend to treat their staffs as moveable and
disposable. Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq expressed her
puzzlement at what she saw as under-funding of education
and, especially, inadequate support for students entering
higher education – though her remarks were rebutted by,
among other, Jonathan Portes, who pointed to recent
changes in policy and the Blair government’s commitment
to expansion in student numbers.
Pierre Razoux counselled against simplistic comparisons
across the Channel. Political economy in the two
countries was “path-dependent”: you could explain the
shift in a liberal direction in the UK in the 1980s by
reference to the financial crisis of the previous decade
when the International Monetary Fund had to tender an
emergency loan. Thus, the British model of public-private
partnership was not going to be applicable in France
where the private sector tended to enter public provision
as a concessionnaire.
And, said Isabelle Lescent-Giles, there’s
differentiation between the two countries in their
business cultures, one influenced by engineering and its
emphasis on security and reliability, the other by
finance – though the “MBA culture” was now spreading in
France. Still, there were marked differences in
conceptions of the public realm, Chantal Hughes remarked,
some of them stemming from this divergence in the
cultural weight of engineering in the two countries. Take
nuclear power, where French policy and attitudes are
remarkably different from the UK’s. Behind that (the
point was made by Helene Masson and others) lay profound
differences in conceptualisation of the state and its
relationship to economy and civil society. The Jacobin
tradition was by no means exhausted in France!
How does this generation unite and divide on
social/cultural questions
That said, there was nothing fundamentally awry in
Franco-British relations. Speakers, led by Yves Censi,
lined up to endorse this view. The Francophile tradition
in UK politics was long and deep. Its restitution
depended only on political will – there to be mobilised
and mustered.
Conference co-chair Simon Atkinson backed this up with
reference to polling data. But first he noted that French
remains the first foreign language taught in English
schools while trips across the Channel to France were
hugely popular, at least among people living in the south
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of England. Warm feelings about France were registered in
surveys: the French are proverbial good at romance and
food, though not necessarily in that order, while the
British were perceived (by themselves at least) as good
at television, sport and music. Older British people
aspired to live in France and hundreds of thousands owned
property there. Laurent Bonnard remarked that many tried
living in France only to return home, finding life there
wasn’t so idyllic.
(put here MORI: Moving to the EU
But an earlier remark by William Vereker about the UK
possessing some strong attraction for younger French
people was disputed. If, as he claimed some 250,000
French people aged between 25 and 35 lived London, as
many British people of the same age lived in Paris,
someone asserted. In one intervention, Jeannette Bougrab
noted tartly that she was one of 60m who had chosen to
remain in France.
M Bonnard said images of each country were often
anachronistic. People in Britain still thought of France
in 1980s terms, along with trains a grande vitesse.
Jeannette Bougrab urged participants to remember the
differences that existed within the territory of the UK.
In France state and language were co-eval while in the UK
the state encompassed more than one nation and several
languages. Participants from Scotland and Wales urged
caution about grand, UK-wide references. John Edward
recalled the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France
before noting that Queen Elizabeth was not head of the
established church in Scotland.
(Put here MORI: Different aspects of Britain and France)
James Tugendhat wondered if some of the debate about
difference really reflected the modern experience of
business where executives did move between countries.
Archetypal French companies L’Oreal and Pernod Rickard
were run by British managers. Perhaps the problem – this
was to be picked up in the seminar’s recommendations for
action – was the relative absence of exchange of staff in
the sphere of politics and public administration.
Seminar participants agreed that both countries faced
similar fissures, over gender, employment and ethnic
minorities. Public attitudes were not markedly different
nor, allowing for institutional differences, were policy
responses. What the seminar showed, however, is that the
language and conceptualisation of questions of cohesion
and integration are distinct on either side of the
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Channel. French Thirtysomethings can muster a
“republican” rhetoric similar to their elders. UK
Thirtysomethings, like the generation before them, prefer
a lower key, pragmatic approach to social integration,
mixed with a slight, but typical, diffidence about
definitions of Britishness. Raj Jethwa noted that
unemployment among young workers from ethnic minorities
in the UK was up to three times that of their white
contemporaries. Young workers were pressured to attain in
the education system, expected to move jobs: he wondered
if things were much different in France. He noted that
the pay gap between the genders had been growing in
France as in the UK, suggesting that neither the French
nor the British employment models were working especially
well. Both left some groups marginalised and excluded.
One failed to maximise security and the other left too
many unemployed, said Sunder Katwala – was there a “third
way” between them?
The countries faced similar questions when it came to
the balance between work, family life and leisure, said
Laurence Laigo. Of course there were differences. She
noted the large gap in labour productivity rates with the
UK underscoring France by up to 25 per cent. Trade unions
faced similar problems. Membership was in decline as the
age profile of the workforce increased; in both countries
unions needed to renew themselves while confronting
globalisation. She extolled the way UK unions had
integrated themselves into European institutions and
welcomed the leadership of John Monks, director of the
European Federation of Trade Unions
Both France and the UK have substantial Muslim
minorities and, on the evidence of this seminar, their
condition, prospects and integration are matters of deep
anxiety to Thirtysomethings even if, as we saw above,
there is no straightforward generational take on
solutions. British participants were puzzled at the
agitation in France over recent months about appropriate
wear at school and the law banning religious symbols.
French participants were puzzled at what they feared was
complacency on the British part about fundamentalism in
their midst, contrasting as they saw it not just with
France but with the Netherlands and Germany as well.
Jeanette Bougrab focused attention on the French
tradition of laicite, and the consistent, even severe,
separation of the state from expressions of religious
affiliation in public spaces. She sought to enlighten
British participants about the debates that have been
going on among French feminists, on the French left and
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right on where tolerance and understanding should end and
the assertion of universal values should begin. France
had no official religion. The school, said Mathieu
Flonneau, were not just educational institutions, they
belonged to a broader, civic tradition, binding students
into the state: they are ecoles de la republique.
Differences of view between France and the UK could be
mapped not just in regard to schooling – take your
approach to monarchy or even to the regulation of
gambling, he said. In the UK you allow things then
regulate them; in France restrictions are imposed, but
exemptions allowed.
The policy question was integration. But did traditional
models of assimilation apply any more? They were intact
in neither country. Against them, said Jeannette Bougrab,
ran a current of fundamentalism impacting on the school
curriculum as on the gender mix in schools. Its eddies
were visible on the streets of Amsterdam and in attempts
to silence criticism of Islam as blasphemy. The object of
policy must be co-existence, she said, but on the basis
of certain values that were non-negotiable. Some of these
values had to do with the position of women; she was
worried that women had failed to protest at abuses in
such countries as Iran. But there were other positions in
the debate about whether Muslim girls should be permitted
to wear headscarves and veils to school. Mathieu Flonneau
noted a paradox of integration in France, that younger
generations were finding it more practical to learn and
use English, regardless of their ethnic background
Don’t take women for granted, Laurence Laigo warned,
they are not “an economic given”. Attention had to be
paid to women’s sensibilities, especially now, at the 30th
anniversary of the passage of the French abortion law.
We share attitudes on migration and minorities,
according to Simon Atkinson. In both France and the UK
some two thirds of the population think the number of
immigrants should be reduced. Those attitudes were
closely linked to respondents’ sense of Britishness and
Frenchness, and in no simple Front National/British
National Party way. People wanted immigrants to be
prepared to take on established customs and values. But
what if – this point was made later in the seminar in
discussions about the future of France and the UK in
Europe – national identities were themselves in flux?
Anwar Akhtar drew on his own experiences of growing up
in an ethnic minority community, separated by race and
religion from his white working class contemporaries.
Social exclusion remains a fact of ethnic minority life
and he warned of how fundamentalism exacerbated it.
Leadership in some Bangladeshi communities in the UK was
“feudal”. He described younger people dropping out of
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school, unlettered and unknowing – they often had no
conception of the Holocaust, he said, and became easy
prey to reactionary preachers of religion. But engagement
with some minorities had to begin overseas, Anwar Akhtar
said: a new UK foreign policy was needed for Afghanistan
and Iraq. Much could be done at home, with mentoring
programmes and better integration in and of schools. The
arts had a role, Fiona Laird asserted, in integrating
communities. Language was however an issue. Addressing
the possibilities of more fruitful British-French
interchange, she worried about the reluctance of English
speaking audiences to hear or see anything other than
English in film or theatre. It was wrong to say British
culture was not open but its penetration by contemporary
European material, including drama from France, was
slight.
How does this generation unite and divide on Europe and
transatlantic relations?
As discussion turned to the future of Franco-British
relations, twin questions were raised, about UK
membership of the European Union on the one hand and
French coming to terms with a changed EU on the other.
Was there a generational colouring to this discussion?
Perhaps Thirtysomethings from the UK are more fatalist
about Europe than their elders. Not less committed nor
any less convinced that the future of their country has
to be “European”, but weary before their time about the
possibilities of shifting opinion in the UK. As for their
French contemporaries, the note struck at the seminar was
more puzzlement: where would France fit in a EU with 25
members; would the fabled relationship across the Rhine
just keep ticking over, taken for granted rather than
celebrated; what on earth could they do about the
behemoth across the Atlantic? Debate over Europe had
migrated inside political parties in both parties, it was
suggested. But where were the “big figures” to present
new phenomena to a new generation that had no sense of
Europe’s history?
(put here MORI: Who are our friends?
And Cultural identity)
Nick Clegg, a former MEP, characterised differences
between France and the UK this way. The Franco-German
motor had made the construction of Europe an “entirely
uplifting affirmation of peace”. For the British
membership of the EU and its predecessors was merely an
“unavoidable fate”. The genius of the EU had been its
capacity to hold and sustain these different views. Could
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that continue as the transatlantic relationship broke
down, the potential entry of Turkey changed Europe in
profound ways and some common security policy was
hammered out? Could the institutions contain differences
in the way they had?
(Put here MORI: EU membership: good or bad?)
Arnaud Leparmentier said Europe for the French had some
of the characteristics of a battleground after a major
defeat. “Their” Europe was a minority game. The UK had
won the latest rounds. But, he quipped, while the British
knew what they don’t want from Europe, the French don’t
know what they do want. The strategy being pursued by
President Jacques Chirac was opaque but what we and he
knew was that in a Europe of 25 Tony Blair was going to
find plenty of allies. Like Nick Clegg, he said the
European Union had to come to terms with the
“transatlantic model”, which he characterised as free
exchange of goods and capital plus strong diplomatic ties
to the United States. Other pressing issues were the
admission of Turkey and the development of common EU
institutions and common tax policies. As for the
constitution (M Leparmentier said), the UK point man
Peter Hain had networked well and made great gains in the
face of declining French influence, compounded by French
diplomats’ “arrogance”.
But don’t both Blair and Chirac lack a strategy for
Europe, asked Richard Whitman. Like Arnaud Leparmentier,
he noted how the UK government had pretty much got what
it wanted from the negotiations over the European
constitution, though you would not think it from official
reactions – no celebration at all. Perhaps that derived
from a lack of self-confidence about where the UK finds
itself.
(Put here MORI: The EU must adopt a constitution)
And that stemmed in large measure from the BritishAmerican connexion. “The disastrous US”, in Laurence
Laigo’s phrase, outside good and evil, committing
absolute error under President George W Bush. It has a
different culture not least from the UK’s, she argued –
those references to homosexuality and God’s place in
political rhetoric were foreign.
Not surprisingly, given the closeness of Prime Minister
Tony Blair to President Bush, the UK minister David
Miliband took a different tack. His theme was greater
rather than less cooperation across the Atlantic.
Together the EU and the United States constituted between
60 and 65 per cent of world GDP. Unless they worked
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together they would both we worse off. The nearest he
came to criticism of American policy was to say that the
US needed a rule based international order. It needed
“founding values” for such an order, as insurance against
the day when it was no longer a superpower. But how was
it to be persuaded to adhere to such rules?
France, with the EU, needed to engage with the US, on
Kyoto, on Israel-Palestine but it would only succeed if,
first, it put its own house in order. By this Mr Miliband
meant behaving itself in an exemplary fashion. Europe
extolled its “soft power”, so why not reach out to Turkey
to draw the country into the European value system. And
meanwhile attend to those values, confronting racism and
anti-semitism at home.
It’s important not to exaggerate the post-Iraq war
rifts, at least between France the UK, said Pierre
Razoux. There had been divergences in the past, and
comings together. He cited Suez in 1956, the invasion of
the Falklands, action in the Balkans in the mid-1990s and
the 1998 military accord at St Malo. Had Iraq had a Suezsize impact on Franco-British cooperation, he wondered?
The object was European security policy, to which France
and the UK separately and together were key.
And the way to combine that with maintenance of the
transatlantic relationship, according to Richard Whitman
to focus UK and French military preparations on action
was that the Americans cannot or will not undertake.
Earlier Denis MacShane said, Iraq to one side, the time
was ripe for a new era of cooperation between France and
the UK on the “big European dossiers” as Britain was seen
as a serious European player.
But much of this debate was nugatory, participants
pointed out, unless the UK came to terms with its
European destiny. Franco-British relations were largely
unintelligible outside the context of Britain in the EU.
And that posed many problems.
We both have problems with Europe, noted Isabelle
Lescent-Giles – a tendency to label bad all the
regulation that emanates from Brussels. In France,
perhaps also in the UK, pro and anti European positions
were now being taken up inside political parties. But
more important, said Agnes Alexandre-Collier was
connecting with public opinion, which meant confronting
the press. We need, she said, to “change the discourse on
Europe”. That cued much anguish and hand-wringing from UK
participants. The pro-European movement in the UK was, in
the words of Nick Clegg, beleaguered, dispersed and
demoralised. No dramatic turnaround in the balance of
European forces was likely. That was mainly because in
the UK the press had taken upon itself the role not just
of critic but of anti-European propagandist. In the face
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of this media usurpation, the political class had given
up its sovereignty.
Chantal Hughes said the Blair government had clearly to
say what it thought about Europe and stop this impression
of the EU being a necessary evil. Even when the UK got
what it wanted, it was presented merely as damage
limitation. Some British participants demurred. John
Eidinow noted that Brussels did interfere and annotated
what he saw as some of the disadvantages of EU membership
for the UK.
Yet membership was the only game in town for the UK in
James Tugendhat’s view: there was no mid-Atlantic future.
He was optimistic. If the real cost of sundering the UK
from Europe could be made transparent and pinned on the
proponents of exit, they would crumble. The choice had to
be crystallised. Anti-Europeans had nowhere to go and the
UK would eventually have to find a positive way of
expressing the project to its own citizens.
Other participants endorsed this plea for clarity of
debate about the nature of the UK’s future in Europe, in
or out. Was it to remain an elite project or might ways
be found to connect with the public at large? Anwar
Akhtar said ordinary people in Leeds and Manchester
needed to see if their interests would be damaged if the
UK were outside the EU. It was going to be very, very
tough for the pro-Europeans to balance the American
agenda.
Yet the UK and France were locked in a common destiny,
said HE Gerard Ererra, the French ambassador to the UK,
as he concluded the seminar. He reminded the meeting of
the positive spirit of President Chirac’s recent visit to
the UK and of the productive talks that had taken place
between Chirac and Blair. The subject of the day’s
conversations was “inexhaustible”; the texture and
quality of Franco-British relations would help shape the
success of the UK’s presidency of the European Union in
2005 and its turn in the chair of the G8. Both countries
had in their different ways to throw off the “weight of
the past”. History, he said, was a rich resource, but
potentially also a hindrance to contemporary
understanding. There was a tendency to validate
“negative” conceptions of the past. He was certain such
forums as this helped fill gaps in our knowledge of each
other.
What proposals can we make?
Being a diplomat M Errera did not directly identify one
agency that might be responsible for spreading
misconception and misunderstanding but participants in
the seminar were less reticent. If a tendentious version
of history were being carried and imposed on modern
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consciousness a powerful and malign agency was
responsible, and it was the media. Especially the British
newspaper press. As they summed up, participants asked
what might be done to ensure television viewers and
newspaper readers were given a fairer picture of France
(in the UK) and the UK in France.
Another theme in the conclusions was that both French
and British socio-economic “models” had strengths, but
both could learn from each other. Sunder Katwala said the
UK could benefit from application of aspects of the
European social model while the European Union needed to
pick up the UK emphasis on jobs and growth.
Participants were positive about ways forward, yet they
ran into a paradox. One dominant theme was the need to
talk more together, to spend more time in conversation,
learning and addressing themes of mutual interest. This
was expressed as an age-specific demand. Yet participants
seemed aware that their concerns, about economy, society,
culture, were not so different from their parents’ nor,
one suspected, their children’s; there was no easilyidentifiable “age-cohort” dimension to Franco-British
attitudes.
As we went round the table asking participants for
succinct suggestions about action to take, several talked
about rectifying and enriching flows of (factual)
information about Europe in the UK and, to a lesser
extent about Europe and the UK in France. Among the
suggestions:  Promote exchanges between schools and universities
(students and academics),
 Increase exchanges between government officials,
especially the Quai D’Orsay. They need not be long
periods of sojourn. Internships or similar might be
built into the training of officials.
 Encourage exchanges between employees in the private
sector.
 British ministers and officials should conduct open
press conferences in Brussels and abandon the
practice of excluding non-British journalists. This
would help prevent “two-tier” presentations of
decisions to UK and non UK audiences and,
potentially, make the conduct of UK policy in the EU
more honest
 The UK government should be urged to reconsider the
plan to stop compulsory foreign language learning
after the age of fourteen. .
 Some more truthful account of aspects of life in
France and the UK should be produced for circulation
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in the respective countries – perhaps in the form of
a brochure verite
Improved coverage of each country in each other’s
media might result from exchanges of reporters and
other press personnel
A European arts and film council should be created
to fund joint projects
The Labour Party should hold its spring conference
in Le Touquet
A joint manual of Franco-British history should be
compiled, similar to the existing Franco-German
historical project.
More forums should be created for conversation and
mutual learning, for the press, politicians and
parliamentarians.
More television documentaries should be produced
about life in each country
The UK government should promote a public
information campaign about Europe, focussing on
areas of multilateral and (Franco-British) bilateral
agreement
The FBC should provide other opportunities for a
similar group to meet and discuss more focused
aspects of Franco-British relations such as minority
cultures and the barriers to success or the work
being done in both countries to close the gender
gap.
end
14