UK France Bilateral Agreement
In May 2018 over 40 senior participants from the UK and France, representing a range of organisations involved with nuclear skills development, gathered at the British Ambassador's Residence in Paris for a joint Skills Seminar to explore how best the UK and France can work together to address the skills required by their respective nuclear sectors.
The Seminar, facilitated by the UK Nuclear Skills Strategy Group and France’s Institut National des Sciences et Techniques Nucléaires (INSTN) focused on how knowledge exchange and collaboration can best create mutual benefit for the two countries. The output is a joint Action Plan for skills.
Dr Fiona Rayment OBE, Chair of the NSSG and Philippe Corréa Director of INSTN, presented the skills challenges and activities that are currently being undertaken by both countries to address these challenges. Both countries, though organised differently, have some obvious opportunities for collaboration. This has the possibility of leading to better, more efficient solutions, with greater organisational support.
The UK and France have a shared history as leading nuclear nations in Europe and in the decades to come, share a desire, to be some of the lowest carbon energy producers in the world.
This position provides an opportunity for the two leading nuclear nations and neighbours to collaborate to ensure they have the skills capacity and capability to achieve their ambitions. The NSSG has already developed a UK collaboration across employers and Government; this agreement is a logical next step, extending the cooperation further, producing a series of actions which will be taken forward by employers and key support organisations.
The specific aims of the Plan are:
- To enable the acceleration of both the UK’s and France’s nuclear skills agendas
- To fully establish the shared skills synergies between France and UK
- To create a small number of focus areas to progress and action
- To build on existing and establish future collaborations on nuclear skills between UK
Executive Briefing and Summary from November 2018
