France has become the last obstacle for the United Kingdom to achieve a vital agreement for both parties
The two neighboring countries have maintained a relationship of love and hate since the conquest of the Normans in 1066
De Gaulle vetoed the British from joining the EU in 1963 on the prophetic argument that they were pro-American and not very European.
–
France has gotten in the way of the UK again. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had practically closed the Brexit trade agreement with the European Union (EU) when the French president, Emmanuel Macron, distrusted and imposed new conditions that London did not like. Johnson wanted to meet with Macron but the EU’s response was that they spoke as a bloc and adopted the demands of France despite the fact that there were European countries that did not share them.
–
There are two points that block the agreement. The first is how to protect yourself from potential unfair competition which the French believe the British may incur. “The British want to have privileged access to the single market without limitations because of its social, environmental and health standards, something that is unacceptable,” said French Europe Minister Clément Beaune. France demands a mechanism to ensure that the UK cannot undermine European business. Johnson does not accept any system that limits his independence.
–
The second is fishing. European fishermen are entitled to 57% of the fishing in British waters, by 43% of the British. London wants to double its quota to 80%, while the EU accepts up to 60 or 65%. The British also ask to negotiate the quotas annually and by type of fish like Norway, something that the EU does not want. For the UK, fishing only accounts for 0.1% of its GDP and it is a very low part also Europeans. However, it is important for the coastal areas of northern France.
–
For Johnson and the British it is an emotional issue, of pride. FIt was a promise of the Brexiters during the referendum. It symbolizes the independence of the EU. All this has ended with the deployment of four British Navy ships in the English Channel. to prevent French fishermen from accessing its waters from January 1. It is one more episode in the love-hate relationship between the British and the French throughout history.
–
The conquest of the Normans
The war story began with the Norman invasion of England in 1066 with an army of Normans, Bretons, Flemings and French led by William the Conqueror, who became the first Norman king of the English. Henry III tried to invade France in 1230 but failed. During practically the entire Middle Ages the English and French were at war all the time. ANDIn the Hundred Years War the French defeated the English.
–
In 1295 the French and Scottish crowns signed an alliance that lasted 265 years to protect themselves from the south or north if the English invaded them. In 1603 the three crowns, the English, the Scottish and the Irish, were united, and James VI of Scotland became I of England and Ireland. In 1707 the United Kingdom was created and a parliamentary monarchy developed, while the French continued with an absolutist monarchy until the French Revolution of 1789.
–
During the 19th century, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte tried to invade the island of Great Britain in a war that would end with the victory of the British navy commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson at Cape Trafalgar against the French and the Spanish in 1805. In 1815 the British, Dutch and German troops commanded by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army they defeated Napoleon’s French army at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium.
–
The 20th century was inaugurated with the ‘Entente Cordiale’, a non-aggression and regulation agreement for colonial expansion signed in 1904 between French and British and that have been renewing over the years since then. The French and the English became the main allies. They fought together in the First World War (1914-18) against the Germans and in the Second World War (1939-1945) against the German Nazis and won both wars. They were also united in the Suez Crisis of 1956 and they sided with Israel against the Egyptians in the Sinai war.
–
The Franco-British Union
In 1940 they were on the verge of creating a constitutional union in the midst of the war against the Nazis. The proposal came out of France. Faced with the unstoppable advance of the Reich army towards the western front, the diplomat Jean Monnet, who would later be the father of the EU and who was in London on an economic mission, proposed the creation of a Franco-British Union. The objective was to avoid the French surrender to Nazi Germany and to try to fight from the colonies. Both Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, and Charles De Gaulle, Secretary of the French National Defense Council, agreed.
–
A Constitution was written that was made public on June 16, 1940. Said that create shared ministries of defense, foreign affairs, finance and economic policy. It said that all French citizens would be British and British, French. They arranged a meeting to seal the deal the next day in the French town of Concarneau.
–
De Gaulle called Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, who was delighted with the idea. But he met with opposition from Marshal Phillippe Petain and the Petainists in Reynaud’s cabinet who feared that Britain wanted to keep its colonies and said “better to be a Nazi province than British rule.” The next day Petain signed an armistice with the Nazis and founded the collaborationist Vichy regime. The meeting did not take place in Concarneau.
–
De Gaulle’s Prophecy
Monnet wanted to create the United States of Europe. That Franco-British constitution later served as the basis for founding the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 with West Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg Belgium and the Netherlands. It was precisely Charles De Gaulle, the French president, who in 1963 vetoed the United Kingdom from joining the select group. He argued that they wanted to impose their own conditions, that their activity was eminently industrial and commercial, not very agricultural, that they traded with distant countries, that they were not very pro-European and, above all, tI wanted it to be the United States’ Trojan horse to weaken the European Union. Many analysts regard de Gaulle’s arguments as prescient.
–
De Gaulle continued to veto UK entry four years later and it wasn’t until 1973 that, with de Gaulle already dead, The United Kingdom was admitted to the select club along with Denmark and Ireland. In 2005 there were strong tensions between French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to freeze the so-called “British check”, which was a compensation of 5,000 million euros a year that was delivered to the United Kingdom for contributing to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with little to no agriculture, a privilege that was achieved by Thatcher in 1984. In 2016 de Gaulle’s prophecy was fulfilled and the UK voted to leave the EU.
–
Thirty-three kilometers away
At its closest point to the English Channel, the coasts of France and England are thirty-three kilometers apartBut sometimes an ocean seems to part them. Former Conservative leader William Hague explained, in a column in the ‘Daily Telegraph’, his experience as foreign minister in the Cameron government between 2010 and 2014. “I experienced how relations with France can be deeply intimate and highly productive daily and yet lead to fierce confrontations on European issues ”.
–
Hague explained that both countries have a different idea of the EU. While the British look across the Atlantic and outward, the French look inward and they dream of a Europe united with them as leaders. He explained that the French are suspicious of the proximity of the British to the United States and that France and the United Kingdom are needed at the military and security level.
–
