France–United Kingdom relations May 1994. The same year the American Society of Civil Engineers elected the Channel Tunnel as one of the seven modern Wonders of the World. 11,675,910 passengers in 2008 travelled on flights between the United Kingdom and France. There are lists of twinnings (including those to towns in other countries) at List of twin towns and sister cities in France and at List of twin towns and sister cities in the United Kingdom. France–United Kingdom relations France–United Kingdom relations are the relations between the governments of the French Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK).
Channel Tunnel the Exchequer of the day, William Ewart Gladstone. Around 1866, William Low and Sir John Hawkshaw promoted ideas, but apart from preliminary geological studies none were implemented. An official Anglo-French protocol was established in 1876 for a cross-Channel railway tunnel. In 1881, the British railway entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin and Alexandre Lavalley, a French Suez Canal contractor, were in the Anglo-French Submarine Railway Company that conducted exploratory work on both sides of the Channel. On the English side a diameter Beaumont-English boring machine dug a pilot tunnel from Shakespeare Cliff. On the French side, a similar machine dug from Sangatte.