Doing business in France – a guide for British investors

Since Brexit, British companies expanding into Europe face a new reality (operational and logistics costs, longer delivery times and customs friction, legal complexity)

For many UK businesses having an EU base is the most reliable solution to avoid those hurdles.

France often emerges as the obvious choice: geographically close, economically powerful, strategically central.

For many UK companies, France still feels like an administrative maze:

• Complex labour law
• Unfamiliar tax and legal frameworks
• Multiple authorities, procedures and acronyms
• Fear of costly mistakes due to lack of local insight

In reality, France is not necessarily “harder” to enter, it has just different ways of operating.

Entering the French market without a clear understanding of how things work can lead to unexpected costs, compliance issues and ultimately delayed market entry.

This is why having clear, reliable and tailored information is so important.

At UK Business Centre Lille, we work daily with British companies navigating European expansion.

We see the same questions come up again and again:

• Where do we start in France?
• What are the real costs?
• How complex is employment law?
• What support exists for foreign investors?

By combining a deep knowledge of how things work in both the UK and France, our experts have created a white paper for British investors to answer those questions and more, clearly, concisely and pragmatically.

✔ Produced by experts supporting British companies in France
✔ Practical, concise and decision-focused
✔ Trusted by international investors and public partners