New Zealand

French presence

Around 5,000 French nationals are registered with the consulate. Some 9,000 young French people are granted working holiday visas for New Zealand every year.

The New Zealander community in France is estimated at 1,400.

Visits

French visits to New Zealand

• March 2023: Visit by Mr Olivier Becht, Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade, Economic Attractiveness and French Nationals Abroad, attached to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs;
• October 2018: Visit by the France-New Zealand Friendship Group to the French Senate;
• April 2018: Visit by Ms Geneviève Darrieussecq, Minister of State for Veterans and Remembrance to Wellington;

New Zealand visits to France

• December 2024: Visit by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters to Nouméa;
• November 2024: Visit by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters to Paris (25-27 November);
• September 2024: Visit by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters to Papeete;
• February 2022: Visit by Nanaia Mahuta, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Paris, in the framework of the Forum for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific;
• June and October 2021: visits to Paris by Mr Damian O’Connor, Minister for Trade and Export Growth and Minister of Agriculture, for negotiations on the EU-NZ free trade agreement;
• May 2019: Visit by Ms Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, to Paris for the launch of the Christchurch Call;
• April 2018: Visit by Ms Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, to Paris.

Cultural, scientific and technical cooperation

Cooperation between our two countries is focused on higher education and scientific research, French language teaching (it is the leading foreign language taught in the New Zealand school system, with 47,000 learners) and in the cultural and educational industries. In late March 2023, agreements strengthening scientific cooperation in agriculture, climate and the environment were signed at the French Embassy in the presence of New Zealand’s Minister for Research, Science and Innovation, Ayesha Verrall, Ambassador Laurence Beau and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE), for the French side.

Other cooperation

Our bilateral cooperation also includes the exchanges that take place on the sidelines of summits and ministerial meetings of regional organizations of the Pacific, of which France is a member (the Pacific Community and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme), and in the framework of the Pacific Islands Forum, the political organization of the region of which New Caledonia and French Polynesia are members. Our relations also grow stronger through direct ties maintained between New Zealand and the French Pacific territories under the auspices of the French Government.