Border: France-United Kingdom

Border: France-United Kingdom

An informal and relatively unstructured form of governance

Highly constrained by geography, French-British cross-border cooperation is characterised by:

  • the small number of cooperation agreements and structures;
  • the absence of a specific legal framework for cooperation or an intergovernmental French-British dialogue on cross-border cooperation issues;
  • the non-ratification of the 1980 Madrid Outline Convention and the absence of an agreement between the two countries similar to the Rome Agreement (France-Italy), the Brussels Agreement (France-Belgium), the Treaty of Bayonne (France-Spain-Andorra) or the Karlsruhe Agreement (France-Germany-Luxembourg-Switzerland);
  • the institutional asymmetry between France and Great Britain. The abolition in 2012 of the regional development agencies on the British side, which were equivalent to France’s regional councils in terms of territorial authority and which shared a number of competences with the latter, has contributed to impeding this cooperation.

The governance structures for French-British cross-border cooperation have been set up at two levels:

  • In a broad framework at the level of the border, cooperation takes the form, via the Channel Arc Manche Assembly, of a network of regions that is still relatively unstructured but which is developing cooperation in diverse areas (tourism, culture, management of the seabed, etc.).
  • At the local level, the cooperation is seeking to promote local relations, with discussions about economic development and transport. The Department Council of Nord-Pas de Calais is playing an active role in this.

Thus, there are several bilateral cooperation agreements concerning cross-border cooperation:

  • The cooperation agreement between the Nord-Pas de Calais Department Council and Kent County Council (2005). Through the impetus of the building of the Channel Tunnel, French-British cooperation was concretised in 1986 by the signature of a memorandum of understanding between the Nord-Pas de Calais Department Council and Kent County Council in the areas of training, territorial development, infrastructure and tourism, etc.
  • The cooperation agreement between the Department Council of Ille-et-Vilaine and the Government of Jersey (2005). Ille-et-Vilaine and Jersey  strengthened their ties via a cooperation protocol, which was signed in 2005 and covers economic development, tourism, education and culture.
  • The cooperation agreement between the Department Council of Finistère and Cornwall Council (2008). The cooperation protocol between the Department Council of Finistère and Cornwall Council,  which was signed in 2008, affirms the desire of the territories to work together on common issues (the sea and coastline, risks of energy dependence, demographic issues and tourism). While these cooperation initiatives do not have dedicated staff, they give rise to numerous projects and produce concrete results.

  1. Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands, an archipelago that is a dependent territory of the British Crown but not part of the United Kingdom (and therefore of the European Union).

  2. Cornwall is a unitary authority, a type of local authority which is responsible for all of the local public functions in the region and which may in some cases carry out additional functions that are usually performed by the tier of government above or even by central government.