France and Belize

Political relations

French interests in Belize are followed by the French Embassy in Guatemala.
Belize is represented in France by its Embassy in Brussels.

French presence in Belize and Belizean presence in France

• French consulate: consular section of the French Embassy in Guatemala.
• French community in Belize: around 50 registered.
• Belizean community in France: between 20 and 30 people.
• Website of the French Embassy in Guatemala

Visits

Odile Roussel, the French Ambassador, visited Belize in September 2022 and September 2023 for the Belizean Diplomatic Week. She met the country’s Foreign Minister, Eamon Courtenay, and the French community.

Economic relations

The Franco-British oil group Perenco (or its Guatemalan subsidiary, to be precise) obtained one of the 17 exploitation concessions issued by the government. Teleperformance, the global leader in call centres, opened a subsidiary in Belize in 2023.

Following the agreement between France and Belize regarding the exchange of tax information, Belize was removed in 2012 from the French list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions. On 12 March 2019, the European Union added Belize to the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes, before removing it in November 2019 after changes to its damaging tax rules. On 17 October 2023, the Council once again added Belize to the list, as the country did not receive an exchange of information on request (EOIR) rating of at least “largely compliant” from the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This led France to again add Belize to its own list of non-cooperative jurisdictions in February 2024, under the European criterion. Following changes to the applicable rules in Belize, the Global Forum did however grant Belize a supplementary review, leading to its removal from the European list pending the results.

In 2019, our bilateral trade fell 5.7% year-on-year, to €5 million: our exports dropped 21.8% to €2.2 million, while our imports grew by 20.7% to 2.8 million.
Our main export, representing 57.5% of the total, is pleasure boats, sales of which more than quadrupled between 2018 and 2019 to total €1.3 million. In second place came livestock feed (€354,300, down 17.8%); and in third, textiles (€202,590 – three times more than in 2018). Our wine sales fell by 36.6% to €80,088. Part of the French community in Belize is active in the hospitality and tourism sectors.
French imports from Belize include spiny lobsters (32%, up 33.1% year-on-year in 2019 to €911,100), shoes (24.3%, up 52% to €691,600), trousers (11.2%, up 80.5% to €319,700) and oranges and limes (10.7%, up almost 700% to €304,700)

Cultural, scientific and technical cooperation

France supports the development of Belize through the work of the European Union, to which it is one of the main contributors: as a member of the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) group of States, Belize has received funding from the European Development Fund since 1982. Cooperation programmes between the European Union and Belize have grown considerably and the EU, which has a Technical Support Office in Belmopan, has become the country’s leading donor, ahead of the United States and the United Kingdom. In the 2021-2024 programming of European cooperation in Belize, €17 million was dedicated to two priorities: sustainable development, notably through green growth, and regional integration. Belize is part of the Euroclima project, which was launched in early 2023 to support environmental sustainability and climate resilience in the Caribbean and is partly implemented by Expertise France.

At bilateral level, the French Global Environment Facility (FFEM) is funding a project to protect the marine environment in southern Belize. Our educational and linguistic cooperation saw new momentum in 2022 thanks to the participation of a young Belizean in the language assistant programme and the translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince into Garifuna, in a project led by the French Embassy in Guatemala. There is an ongoing project to create a virtual Alliance Française branch. 

Updated: 30 May 2024