MBS Paris Visit: Saudi-France Sign Key Deals

Riyadh and Paris Deepen Ties as Crown Prince Wraps Up State Visit

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman concluded a two-day state visit to France on Monday, meeting President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace to formalize a fresh round of agreements spanning health, transport and energy, in a trip that underscored how far the Saudi-French relationship has evolved over the past four years.

The visit, the Crown Prince's third to France since 2022, began on Sunday evening when he joined Macron at the Grand Palais for the closing ceremony of the Esports World Cup, the first time the Riyadh-founded gaming tournament has been staged outside the Kingdom. It was a symbolic curtain-raiser to a day of substantive bilateral business.

A Wide-Ranging Agenda

On Monday, Saudi and French officials worked through a checklist that went well beyond ceremonial diplomacy. Alongside the health, transport and energy accords, negotiators have also been finalizing details of a proposed Dragon Ball-themed amusement park in the Greater Paris region, a project backed by a Saudi investment vehicle and inspired by the popular Japanese manga franchise.

Valérie Pécresse, president of the regional council of Île-de-France, told French broadcaster TF1 that the regional government had spent 18 months developing the concept, describing its ambition as comparable to Disneyland. She said a signing at the Élysée could follow the two leaders' meeting.

Beyond entertainment and infrastructure, the two sides used the visit to advance discussions on regional security and economic cooperation, with particular attention paid to energy routes that bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Officials are understood to have discussed new pipeline capacity, upgrades to existing infrastructure and alternative port networks that would reduce Gulf producers' reliance on the narrow waterway.

Why Hormuz Matters to This Relationship

France remains one of the largest buyers of Saudi crude and mineral products, which makes the health of shipping lanes through the Gulf directly relevant to Paris as well as Riyadh. Since the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran began on February 28, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a corridor that normally carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas supplies — has been severely disrupted.

The knock-on effect on prices has been dramatic. Brent crude, the global benchmark, traded around 119, and on Monday it was changing hands near $93 — still well above pre-war levels and a reminder of how exposed global energy markets remain to developments in the Gulf.

Against that backdrop, the Crown Prince and the French President also discussed the broader regional picture, including the continuing war in Iran, the situation in Gaza, and developments in Syria and Lebanon, where Israeli forces still occupy roughly a fifth of Lebanese territory.

Looking Ahead to 2030 and 2034

The two leaders also used the meeting to look further down the calendar, discussing Saudi Arabia's preparations to host Expo 2030, an event built around themes of sustainability and urban innovation, as well as the Kingdom's role as host of the 2034 football World Cup. Both are flagship projects in Saudi Arabia's strategy to position itself as a global events and investment destination.

A Trade Relationship Built on Complementary Strengths

Economically, Saudi Arabia and France maintain a relationship that is close to balanced. According to 2024 figures from the Observatory of Economic Complexity, France exported around 4.6 billion in return.

The composition of that trade tells its own story. Refined petroleum accounted for about 72 percent of Saudi exports to France, supplemented by crude petroleum and other mineral products, along with smaller volumes of machinery, chemicals and vehicles. French exports to the Kingdom are far more diversified, ranging from airliners and helicopters to gas turbines, pharmaceuticals and perfume.

Building on a Formal Partnership

Monday's talks build directly on groundwork laid in December 2024, when Macron traveled to Riyadh and the two countries established the Saudi-French Strategic Partnership Council, a body designed to formalize and elevate political and economic coordination between the two capitals.

Notably, this trip is also the Crown Prince's first international visit since the signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement on August 7, a mutual-defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan under which an armed attack on any one signatory would be treated as an attack on all three. Analysts have pointed to the pact as evidence that Riyadh is actively diversifying its security partnerships beyond its traditional reliance on Washington — a trend that the Paris visit, with its emphasis on European cooperation, appears to reinforce.

As the Crown Prince's delegation prepares to depart Paris, officials on both sides describe the visit as another step in a relationship that has moved well past oil and arms sales into technology, entertainment, sustainability and shared strategic planning for the next decade.

 






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