Franco‐British Bilateral Diplomacy After Brexit, 2020–2025: Mending the Ties That Bind

Abstract

Brexit shook to its very core one of the European Union's (EU's) prominent partnerships, the Franco‐British bilateral relationship (FBBR), disrupting diplomatic routines and shattering interpersonal trust before circumstances changed and the relationship rapidly began to mend. In this article, we analyse the breakdown and restoration of Franco‐British bilateral diplomacy after Brexit, between 2020 and 2025. Theoretically, we draw on Hedley Bull's framework for understanding diplomacy as a set of norms and behaviours within an international (here, regional) society. Empirically, we draw on 14 original, semi‐structured elite interviews with French and British diplomatic officials. Our main findings are that shared material interests and existing institutional arrangements alone fail to explain the speed with which Franco‐British relations were restored. Instead, the resumption of diplomatic niceties (including restored trust and the rekindling of interpersonal relationships), all in the context of a very specific historical narrative, were crucial elements in the rebuilding of Franco‐British diplomatic ties. Similar factors, moreover, govern the ongoing diplomatic process of reshaping ties between the triangle formed by the United Kingdom, the EU and its 27 member states and by which, we demonstrate, the FBBR is constrained. We thereby contribute to existing bodies of academic work on the FBBR, to the emerging literatures on UK–EU bilateral relations post‐Brexit and to scholarly understandings of bilateral diplomacy per se.