Dear British friends,

Your country has just left the European Union, after 47 years of life together.

It is the result of the sovereign decision the British people expressed in the referendum of June 2016, a democratic choice France has always respected.

Yet I must also tell you, as an ally and, even more, as a friend and true European, how deeply sad I am at this departure. And I am thinking, today, of the millions of Britons — from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — who still feel deeply attached to the European Union. I am thinking of the hundreds of thousands of French…