The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will make his first presidential visit to Britain when he meets Theresa May for talks later this month, Downing Street has said.



The British prime minister will seek to use the 35th UK-France summit – to be held at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst on 18 January – to project an enduring strength of relations between the two countries despite Britain’s decision to leave the EU.

While such events traditionally focus on defence and security co-operation and foreign policy matters, British officials said the talks would be broadened to cover the “full spectrum” of bilateral issues, including education, science and innovation.

In particular the British side want to emphasise the close “people-to-people” links between the two countries, with more than 150,000 British nationals living in France and a similar number of French citizens in the UK.

Nevertheless, following the decision last month of EU leaders to green light the second phase of the Brexit talks, Britain’s impending withdrawal from the bloc is likely to feature prominently in their discussions.

The French president last week urged EU leaders to maintain their united front as the negotiations moved on to discuss transitional arrangements after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019, as well as a future free trade agreement.

Meanwhile, prominent figures in the City believe France is seeking to use Brexit as an opportunity to make inroads into Britain’s traditional dominance of the financial services sector.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, May said: “France is one of the UK’s oldest and closest allies and our partnership is one that we both rely on.

“Our armed forces are taking the fight to Daesh [another name for Isis] in Iraq and Syria, while closer to home our security co-operation helps to foil terrorist plots on UK and French streets.

“We also work closely together as the only European countries who are permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as members of the G7, G20 and Nato, upholding our shared faith in the rules-based international system.

“And our two countries also enjoy deep economic ties, sharing £71bn in trade, making France the UK’s third-largest trading partner.”