Economic Diplomacy and Tech Startups:
the “What” and “How” of an Honorary Consul of France in Austin, Texas
I do not have diplomatic immunity, but special license plates are available to me for purchase.
A local law enforcement officer has checked in with me for my safety after high-profile terror attacks in France.
I have a photo I.D. issued by the U.S. State Department, and the State Department included in their background check an in-person inspection of my residence: they had to make sure they could protect me should circumstances demand it.
All this for the post of Honorary Consul of France.
The FAQs:
(1) What do you do as an Honorary Consul?
(2) How on earth did you get to be an Honorary Consul?
In very general terms, an honorary consul supports the Consul general and the consulate staff for the circonscription (the “district” or territory that the Consulate oversees) with their mission: to support the interests of France and provide certain administrative services for French citizens. There are 56 honorary consuls for France throughout the U.S. You do not have to be a French national to be an honorary consul (I was born in Galveston, Texas and raised in West Texas), but you do have to speak French. But this short answer does not begin to describe my own experience as an honorary consul.
“Don’t worry,” the Consul general said. “It’s not much more than what you’re already doing.”
Our previous Consul general, Sujiro Seam, called me for a meeting in downtown Austin during SXSW 2014 — right in the middle of my preparing a client’s case for trial. At the time I also on the Board of Directors of Austin International School, which is accredited by the French National Ministry for Education as it teaches the French curriculum, and I was three years in working on the Austin relationship on the business side with our sister city in Angers, France. (It might help to know that I started teaching myself French with Berlitz records at age 13, majored in French with junior and senior honors theses written in French, and spent my junior year of college in Paris: at Sciences Po and l’Université Paris-Sorbonne). Sujiro proposed many initiatives for me to lead, such as creating the French American Business Council of Austin. When the Consul general finally did ask me to accept the recently-vacated honorary consul post, after I already told the previous honorary consul “no” when he asked if I’d take his place (I was already doing way too much volunteer work on my many passion projects for France-Austin connection-making), he assuaged my concerns. The (volunteer) post would not be much extra work beyond what I already was doing. After all, I already was accompanying him for meetings with legislators and business leaders and already promoting France and Austin. Maybe a speech here and there also would be required as honorary consul, but that was about it.
That was about to change.
Terror Attacks and a State of Emergency
Two weeks after the post became official, gunmen entered a concert hall in Paris called the Bataclan and killed 129 concert goers. Those events 5000 miles away had a direct impact in Austin. I was helping oversee a delegation from France that was in Austin, at that very time, from sister city Angers. One friend in the delegation had a son who was supposed to go the Bataclan concert that night but cancelled at the last minute. We later learned that one of his friends who did go to the concert died in the attack. Leaders of the delegation had to quickly find flights back to France. I had frequent phone call updates with the Consul general. I had to turn off all geolocation services on my smart phone. Because the state of emergency in France prohibited French citizens from gathering in great numbers in public, we had to respect this precaution in Austin. My orders were to ensure police protection, or at least awareness by local law enforcement, for any manifestations that were going to take place. In a moving moment of international solidarity, I represented France when the Governor’s office held a minute of silence in front of the Governor’s Mansion to honor the victims of the attack.
Eight months later, France was rocked again by terror. This time in the south of France, in Nice, on France’s national holiday of all days. With the deputy consul general from Houston, I attended the funeral in Austin of a young boy and his dad from Lakeway who were killed in the attack while vacationing with their family. I would later lead a moment of silence in Austin where a group had gathered in solidarity for the victims of that attack, the second on French soil in less than a year.
This was a rough start to this new position. But it reinforced my commitment to the philosophy behind my France-Texas relationship-building work: regardless of the cultures or countries involved, breaking through stereotypes and promoting tolerance remain necessary goals as contemporary geopolitics become increasingly complex.
Passports, signatures, and “proof of life” stamps
Outside those out-of-the-ordinary events, honorary consul work is mostly administrative, but it can include visiting French citizens who may be incarcerated or detained in any way and accompanying the ashes of a deceased French citizen. (I have been assured the latter is a very rare occurrence). I have not yet been asked to visit anyone in jail.
Before a change in the way France distributes passports to French citizens in the U.S., I would hold regular permanences (consular meetings) at the French Legation in East Austin, the site of France’s diplomatic outpost during the Texas Republic.
There I would do the paperwork for distributing French passports and cartes nationales d’identité to those who had made an appointment through the Consulate. Sometimes these permanences would include my having to do a légalisation de signature, a proof of signature, typically required for notaries in France and typically for real estate transactions. I also have a very official stamp that by law can only be used on two documents. The first is a voting proxy when a French national is giving a proxy (une procuration) to someone in France to vote for them in an election. Alas, I cannot do the procuration de vote because I am not a French citizen. The second use for this special stamp is a certificat de vie. Agencies that manage French citizens’ retirement funds require that a French citizen provide proof that they are still living. I can stamp these documents. I also answer a lot of questions about visas, but only to tell those asking that I cannot handle visa questions as an honorary consul. I frequently re-direct inquiries about the process to obtain French nationality: only the Consulate general in Los Angeles handles that process. As a lawyer who loves procedure and cross-border transactions, I enjoy this small window into French administrative law.
The “40 and 8,” the Merci Train, and the French Medal of Honor
As the Consul general predicted, I am asked to give speeches — mostly to veterans organizations. The most recent speech was for the annual meeting of a fraternity known as the forty men and eight horses (see the story here), more commonly known as the “40 & 8.” One year I was asked to speak at a beautiful ceremony on the south steps of the Capitol to honor the fact of Austin’s receiving from France for the State of Texas a Merci Boxcar. The Merci Boxcar celebrates a poignant moment in France-U.S. friendship. After WW2, France was in dire straits economically. A private citizen in the U.S. raised funds to send much-needed supplies to France — $40 million in goods filling up 700 rail cars. To repay the generosity, people from all over France loaded up boxcars with their prized possessions, which they sent to the U.S.: one boxcar for each state and the District of Columbia. The 40 & 8 organization safeguards the memory of that event and the boxcar sent to Austin.
But one event will always stand out. France has a policy of seeking out and honoring the Americans who fought on French soil to liberate France in World War II. The French government, through the French Consulates in the U.S., are seeking out such veterans to award them France’s highest honor: the National Order of the Legion of Honor, or French medal of honor. The medal dates back to 1802, when Napoleon Bonaparte instituted a new order to recognize merit and reward civilians and soldiers who had achieved great things in the service of France.
This moving ceremony is typically the purview of the Consul general on Veterans’ Day, except for one particular case of a veteran in Killeen who was very ill. His case was expedited to ensure he could receive the medal while he was still alive. Because it was quicker for me to get to Killeen, the Consul general asked me to perform the ceremony. The medal was sent to my house via FedEx.
On the appointed day, in this gentleman’s home where he was surrounded by his family and local press, I gave a short speech about the history of the medal, France’s gratitude, and the battles this man had fought on foreign soil. Although the ceremony can be flexible as to format, one part is mandatory. When it comes to the moment of actually pinning the medal on the veteran’s lapel, these words bestowing the medal and the honor must be recited in French: “Au nom du Président de la République, nous vous remettons les insignes de chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.”
Celebrating the deep historical ties between France and the United States never gets old for me.
“But how did you get appointed as an Honorary Consul of France?!”
The short and easy answer is that the Consul general asked me. But in reality, it was decades of investment for this passion project of connecting France to Texas, in whatever shape or form made sense for a particular person or project.
It turns out that what I was doing all along as a francophone/francophile lawyer building connections across France and Texas, and working to support French startups and connections in the U.S., was a form of French foreign policy known as “economic diplomacy.” As a lawyer I had been discovering France’s tech ecosystem and deal flow to see how technology commercialization works in France — with the idea that I would learn about technology licensing and tech transfer from a different perspective.
Once Austin became une ville jumelle (a sister city) with Angers, France, I headed to Angers to figure out how Austin and Texas could benefit from that relationship. The result was a growing knowledge base of many aspects of France’s administrative scheme for technology and entrepreneurship programs (which I will never master in this lifetime) and its vast network of ecosystems. This mission included getting familiar with western France’s electronics industry, the growing movement and change in spirit in France to embrace entrepreneurial endeavors, and the very active startup scene in Paris and elsewhere in France. I was then and am still the Chair of the Board of Directors of our French American Business Council of Austin (FABCA), which runs French Tech Austin, a French initiative promoting (i) France’s robust and much-changed startup culture and (ii) French entrepreneurs and techies in Austin. The French Tech Austin team of volunteers is led by Christophe Daguet, who has done a tremendous job building a cohesive, energized community to support that mission. (Come check us out at French Tech Austin’s French Tech Tuesday. We meet every month for socials or programs. You do not have to be French, and you don’t have to even speak French. Our next event is June 12 at International Accelerator. It’s free to attend; we just ask folks to RSVP).
Against this backdrop, the honorary consul work for me involves connecting people and facilitating transactions, economic or cultural, and keeping projects from derailing due to business culture misunderstandings. In this sense, it is a seamless continuation of my life before the post, except now I attend more official economic summits and advisory meetings to promote Texas in France and French interests in Texas.
With French President Emmanuel Macron’s longstanding penchant for entrepreneurship, the time for Austin-France collaboration has never been better.
As a testament to good things to come, we had the French Ambassador to the U.S., Gérard Araud, in Austin earlier this year for an unprecedented two days of visits with journalists, startups, and cultural and art institutions. These visits were part of the curated Austin experience based on the official reason for his visit: the signing of documents creating an endowed excellence fund between France and the University of Texas at Austin. The Ambassador was kind enough in his parting words to tell me the Honorary Consul post was mine for the next thirty years (it runs in five-year increments).
Thanks to having this post, I was invited to attend the reception offered by le Président de la République et Madame Brigitte Macron for the French community at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. on the occasion of their recent State visit. A fortuitous decision of where to stand to wait out President Macron’s arrival on stage meant that I even got to shake his hand as he entered the room.
I would thus disagree with our Consul general’s assessment of the honorary consul post. It is so not “not much more” than what I was already doing. It has been far more: more demanding, but also far more rewarding and inspiring.
