Prime Minister Keir Starmer, visiting Germany and France, wants to move closer to the EU

New Prime Minister Keir Starmer travelled to Berlin and then Paris on Wednesday. He wants to regain the trust of his European allies after a difficult period. This will be achieved through trade, but also through defence.

What does the future hold for the relationship, which has been very damaged over the last eight years, with our British neighbours? The new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer went to Germany on Wednesday 28 August 2024 to meet with Olaf Scholz, before arriving in France in the evening, where he will attend the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in Paris.

Upon his arrival at 10 Downing Street in early July, he pledged to restore trust with his European allies. However, there is no question of going back on Brexit, this divorce enacted at the ballot box 8 years ago and consummated 4 years later, in 2020. Even if all the polls across the Channel show that a majority of Britons regret leaving the EU, Labour’s Keir Starmer, no more than the Conservatives, is considering any kind of backtracking.

Keir Starmer rules out joining the European single market and the customs union, let alone the treaty on the free movement of people. But he is not against boosting trade with Europeans. Barely elected, the Prime Minister defined himself as a “friend and partner” of the 27, and has set itself the priority of recovering the British economy.

After the “black hole” left by the conservatives, it justifies a budget “painful” to come, because finding growth again is the “mission number one”, Keir Starmer hammered home in Berlin. This growth will not be achieved without Germany, the United Kingdom’s second largest trading partner. On Thursday, August 28, the British Prime Minister will meet French business leaders in Paris, before meeting Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace.

Another area of ​​cooperation between London, Berlin and Paris: security and defence. Keir Starmer and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz confirmed during the day the signing, by the end of 2024, of an unprecedented bilateral treaty: “The chance of a generation”, they say. This agreement will include a defense component that is all the more important since Germany and the United Kingdom are, after the United States, the leading providers of military aid to Ukraine.

The third major issue of Keir Starmer’s mini-European tour: immigration. A particularly hot topic after the two tragic events in the United Kingdom and Germany. Racist riots shook England after a knife-wielding attack on three young girls by a child of naturalized immigrants, who had autistic disorders. While in Germany, the deadly attack in Solingen on Friday, August 23, 2024, perpetrated by a Syrian and claimed by the Islamic State, rekindled the debate on immigration and strengthened the far right. The subject of immigration has also weighed down Franco-British relations in recent years, with the Conservatives then in power in London making the fight against small boats crossing the Channel a political marker.

This is now the British Prime Minister’s objective: to turn a stormy and painful page, to repair the “broken relationships, inheritedhe said, of the previous government” through gestures and words, and also bilateral agreements.