The French government is to open a new cultural and diplomatic base in the heart of Edinburgh, reinvigorating one of Scotland’s oldest and strongest foreign alliances.

France has taken over one of the most prestigious buildings on the Royal Mile, the former chambers for Lothian regional council opposite St Giles Cathedral, as the new home for its consulate and its cultural institute.

The move comes after serious discussions over whether the consulate had a future at all, with some concerns over costs, and it is hoped that the new site will be more economically viable. Diplomats insist the relocation is not a political statement in support of Scotland’s demands for greater autonomy or independence: they say France shares the European commission’s reluctance to promote the break-up of EU member states.

Even so, France’s decision to acquire such a prominent site will add to Scotland’s confidence and reinforce its efforts to be seen as a European nation in its own right while the UK struggles with its divorce from the EU.

Dominating the busiest square in the Old Town, the new consulate is to house a language school, offices and rehearsal rooms for orchestras and arts organisations, a specialist library of French literature with 30,000 books, and a 100-seat concert venue.



The consulate general will be formally inaugurated on Wednesday by Princess Anne, the Princess Royal. She is naming the main room at the French Institute, the cultural and French language arm of the foreign ministry which shares the building, after Émilienne Moreau-Evrard, a resistance fighter in both world wars who worked with Scottish soldiers as a teenager in 1915.

Many Scots will see echoes of the medieval Auld Alliance, when France was Scotland’s closest ally. For much of the almost 300 years from 1295 to 1560, the two nations were united in their hatred of the English, culminating in French troops arriving in Scotland to help repel Henry VIII’s forces in 1548.



The consulate is already flying the French tricolour and a European 12-starred flag, and its consul general, Emmanuel Cocher, hopes to see it become a major venue during the Edinburgh festival while keeping its consular role for French citizens and businesses in Scotland.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emmanuel Cocher unrolls a French tricolour above the new consulate. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

From its then newly acquired consulate on Randolph Crescent in the New Town, the French were among the first foreign nations to support the Edinburgh international festival when it began in the aftermath of the second world war, in 1947, and have supported the festival every year since.

Cocher said the decision to acquire the Lothian Chambers site on a 125-year lease followed intense debates inside the French government about the consulate’s future, and was made on economic grounds, not political.

“This is a once-in-a-century opportunity,” he said. “We are investing. We want to be in Scotland, but at the same time we want to be sustainable, which is why there is a partnership dimension and there will be a fundraising dimension too, to make it a first-class cultural venue.”

In common with other countries, following the global recession of 2008 and the rapidly increased use of digital technologies, the French had been close to shutting down their consulate in Edinburgh and in other EU cities on cost grounds.

While the UK is in the EU, French citizens in Scotland have the same rights at British ones, again reducing its role as an outpost of the embassy in London.

French-Scottish relations were severely hit in early 2015 after a Scotland Office special adviser leaked a UK government memo which quoted Cocher’s predecessor, Pierre-Alain Coffinier, claiming Nicola Sturgeon would prefer that David Cameron, the then Conservative leader, win the 2015 UK general election. Sturgeon denied the claim.



The so-called Nickileaks affair led to an official inquiry, the resignation of the special adviser, and a very rare legal challenge over the election of Alistair Carmichael, the then Scottish secretary who had authorised the leak. Carmichael survived the legal challenge but Coffinier left Edinburgh that summer, and is understood to have left the French diplomatic service.



Edinburgh is home to a small but busy diplomatic circuit, including Japanese and Spanish professional diplomats, but the US too was close to closing down its consulate. It was saved but downgraded. The Scottish independence referendum of 2014 helped force a rethink.

Cocher said sub-letting much of the new building, which has a much smaller floor area than the three Georgian townhouses it previously used, to arts organisations made it financially viable. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra is in talks about being one of its new tenants, as is a visual arts body and a contemporary orchestra.

During the festival in August, the consulate will become a fringe venue. The medieval square it shares with St Giles Cathedral and the Signet Library, an ornate legal building, then becomes one of the busiest open air venues of the fringe for jugglers and acrobats.

On its southern side sits the National Library of Scotland, and a warren of courtrooms, corridors and the former medieval Scottish parliament hall which makes up the court of session, the centre of Scotland’s civil courts system. To the north, across the Royal Mile, is the city’s high court.

Julian Goodare, a reader in Scottish history at the University of Edinburgh, said the Auld Alliance was “a political and military alliance. It wasn’t about the Scots liking French orchestras or French wine. The reason the Scots and the French cooperated is they both hated the English, and the English hated them.”