Macron to address UK parliament during visit next week
PARIS
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer (L) and France's President Emmanuel Macron attend an meeting between French, British and German representatives at a hotel on the sidelines of the two-day NATO's Heads of State and Government summit in The Hague on June 24, 2025. (Photo by Kin Cheung / POOL / AFP)
French President Emmanuel Macron will address parliament during his U.K. state visit next week, when he will receive a royal welcome and attend a summit on deepening bilateral ties.
Macron is the first French president to make a state visit since Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008 and will follow in the footsteps of his predecessors Charles de Gaulle and Francois Mitterrand who formally addressed the British parliament.
"The president and Mrs Macron will visit the Palace of Westminster, where the president will address parliamentarians" on July 8, the Buckingham Palace office of King Charles III said on July 4.
The king invited the French leader and his wife Brigitte for the three-day visit, which starts on July 8.
The monarch will host them for a state banquet at his Windsor Castle residence, west of London, where the couple will also stay.
Macron will also hold talks with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during the trip, which follows a state visit by Charles to France in September 2023.
This visit "will demonstrate the depth of the ties that unite our two countries and our two peoples", the French president's office said.
There were simmering political tensions between Paris and London in the immediate aftermath of Brexit under the previous right-wing Conservative British government.
The two countries have yet to agree a strategy to halt migrants making perilous small boat crossings of the Channel, a key political issue in the U.K.
It will be high on the agenda during the 37th Franco-British summit, which will take place in London on July 10.
