Britain and Germany are placing their newly ratified Kensington Treaty at the centre of a closer bilateral relationship, as UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham meets German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin.

The German Federal Government said both countries had completed the treaty’s ratification and that the agreement creates new opportunities for cooperation. The framework includes stronger political, economic and social links, with longer visa-free school and student exchanges among the practical measures highlighted by Berlin.

The treaty arrives at a moment when Europe is being asked to carry more of its own security burden. The United Kingdom is outside the European Union but remains a major European military and diplomatic power. Germany is the bloc’s largest economy and one of its central political actors. A durable bilateral relationship between the two countries could therefore matter beyond the documents signed in London and Berlin.

Security will be one of the clearest tests. Cooperation is easy to announce and harder to translate into compatible planning, reliable industrial capacity and decisions taken quickly enough to deter threats. The two governments will need to show whether the treaty produces practical work in areas such as defence, resilience and protection against hostile interference, rather than becoming another statement of shared intent.

The agreement also has a less dramatic but important human dimension. Easier exchanges for pupils and students can rebuild links between societies that have been disrupted by Britain’s separation from EU programmes and by the wider political turbulence of recent years. Cultural and educational contact is often treated as secondary to strategy, but it is part of the trust on which long-term cooperation depends.

For Britain, a deeper German relationship offers a route back into European cooperation without reversing its formal position outside the EU. For Germany, it brings London closer to a European security conversation at a time when the continent is reconsidering its assumptions about defence, energy and economic resilience.

The Kensington Treaty will be judged by delivery. Its first test is whether the new machinery produces visible cooperation before the next crisis demands it. The second is whether the relationship can remain useful when British and German interests do not align perfectly.

The Berlin meeting is therefore not simply a diplomatic photo opportunity. It is an early examination of whether a treaty can become a working instrument for European security and public confidence.