Search form

You are here

  • Home
  • The strategic partnership that underpins the enduring Saudi-French relationship


The strategic partnership that underpins the enduring Saudi-French relationship

The strength of the political ties and strategic partnership between France and Saudi Arabia is evident in the large number of visits undertaken by their leaders and officials in recent years. (Supplied)
Short Url

https://arab.news/jz746

Updated 29 July 2022
Lama Alhamawi
Follow

The strategic partnership that underpins the enduring Saudi-French relationship

  • Strength of political ties reflected in the numerous visits undertaken by Saudi and French leaders and officials
  • Relations have expanded to include military assistance, advanced technology, investments and cultural cooperation
Updated 29 July 2022
Lama Alhamawi

RIYADH: The arrival of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in France on a state visit continues a tradition of frequent high-level exchanges between the two friendly countries.

The strength of the political ties and strategic partnership between France and Saudi Arabia is evident in the large number of visits undertaken by their leaders and officials in recent years.

Since 2017, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has visited France once. During the same period, France’s foreign minister has visited Saudi Arabia three times, while French President Emmanuel Macron has visited the Kingdom once.

The last official diplomatic visit occurred in December 2021, when President Macron met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah as part of a tour of Gulf countries. 

Formal relations between France and the Arabian Peninsula can be traced back to 1839, when the former opened a consulate in Jeddah — its first diplomatic post in the region.

Prince Faisal bin Abdulaziz, the future king of Saudi Arabia, was the first member of the royal family to pay an official visit to France in 1919. Full diplomatic relations began when France recognized the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd, the forerunner to the unified Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, established in 1932.

In his role as foreign minister, Prince Faisal again visited Paris after France became one of the first countries to recognize the kingdom.

In 1967, King Faisal visited French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris — his first state visit as ruler of the Kingdom. Since then, the relationship between the two countries has flourished and become closer than ever.

Numerous agreements have been signed between them, from military assistance and advanced technology to economy and cultural cooperation.

The Kingdom’s relations with France are built on the common interests of “preserving security in a troubled region, a common commitment to combating terrorism, and a convergence of views on regional crises,” according to the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs’s website.

Saudi Arabia and France have robust business ties, as shown both by the economic history and total trade volume between the two. In 2021, France imported $3.8 billion worth of Saudi goods, while it exported $3.23 billion to the Kingdom, according to the UN’s Comtrade international trade database.

Banque Saudi Fransi is a Saudi joint stock company established by a Saudi royal decree in 1977, and is associated with the French Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank. The bank now boasts more than 100 branches across the Kingdom and more internationally.

The Saudi-French Business Council, established in 2003, has held dozens of sessions to discuss bilateral trade and investment.

The two countries have not just engaged in economic relations with one another, but have come together to assist other nations by providing joint economic relief.

In April this year, Saudi Arabia and France announced a joint development fund to provide $76 million for the development of food safety, health, education, energy, water, and internal security forces in crisis-stricken Lebanon.

Perhaps no sector of Saudi-French relations is sturdier or more readily observed than that of joint cultural and artistic ventures. In 2018, Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan, Saudi Arabia’s minister of culture, and Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, signed an intergovernmental agreement to collaborate on the development of the cultural and tourism destination AlUla.

Since this agreement, France and Saudi Arabia have worked closely and intensely on AlUla’s development. Also in 2018, the Royal Commission for AlUla signed an agreement with Campus France to train 68 Saudi hospitality employees to work at AlUla, and the next year, it was announced that the site would be home to a luxury resort designed by award-winning French architect Jean Nouvel.

Ludovic Pouille, the current French ambassador to the Kingdom, spoke to Arab News earlier this month about the continuing cultural cooperation.

“In 2002, the very first Franco-Saudi archaeological excavation, led by the French archaeologist Laila Nehme, was launched in Mada’in Saleh,” he told Arab News.

“This year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of this cooperation, which has expanded with no less than 16 Franco-Saudi archaeological missions in the Kingdom.”

He noted that several agreements had been signed in recent years to open training centers for Saudi youth in collaboration with the French Football Federation.

This year in May, the Saudi-French Business Council hosted a high-level French delegation representing the entertainment sector to discuss potential French investment in the Kingdom’s flourishing entertainment industry.

Campus France’s initiative is far from the only joint educational venture between France and the Kingdom. In 2021, at a dinner in Riyadh, Bertrand Besancenot, the then-French ambassador to Saudi Arabia, stated that 1,500 Saudi students were studying at French universities, and that many of these universities signed agreements aiming to boost the number of Saudi students in the country.

The two states, both G20 members, also have clear visions for progress and modernization. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched Saudi Vision 2030 in 2016, while France launched its own French Vision 2030 a few months ago. The goals of both plans include energy transition to renewables, digital transitions, and sustained economic growth.

France has long stood in solidarity with the Kingdom in the face of military and militant attacks on Saudi Arabia. In December 1979, France sent advisers from its elite GIGN special police and trained members of the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate who ended the siege of the Grand Mosque in Makkah by armed fanatics.

In March this year, France condemned attacks carried out on Saudi territory by the Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthi militia.

France is also a major provider of defense equipment and technologies to Saudi Arabia, a relationship underscored by the $12 billion in deals signed between the two countries in 2015.

In 2019, Saudi Arabian Military Industries announced at a military exhibition in Abu Dhabi that the Kingdom had signed an agreement with France’s Naval Group to build warships in Saudi Arabia. Two years later, SAMI announced joint investments with the French Airbus and Figeac Aero companies.

Against this background, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to France is expected to cement ties in all areas of the two countries’ diplomatic relations.

 

 

FASTFACT

History of modern France




(SHUTTERSTOCK)

The French Revolution of 1789 saw France transform from a monarchy to a republic, which came under the control of Napoleon Bonaparte 10 years later.

After he became emperor of the First French Empire from 1804-1814, his armies conquered large swaths of continental Europe. Another monarchy emerged from the wake of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, and Napoleon’s nephew created the Second Empire in 1852, becoming the last monarch to rule over France.

He was ousted and the monarchy was replaced by the Third French Republic in 1870. Throughout the 19th century and early 20th century, France maintained a large colonial empire across West Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

France sided with the Allied Powers during the Second World War, but was split in two during the conflict, with most of the country controlled by a collaborationist, pro-German government.

The country slowly recovered after the end of the war, but long wars in its colonies in Indochina (now Vietnam) and Algeria saw it ousted from these regions, and by the 1960s, most of France’s former colonies had achieved independence.

France has been a full member of the UN Security Council and NATO since the end of the Second World War, and played a vital role in the establishment of the EU. France has a large Muslim and Arab population owing to its former colonies in north Africa, and many of these populations suffer from social alienation and high unemployment rates.

The country has been the site of unrest and protests against the enforcement of strict secular policies and controversial bills, some of which have attempted to ban the wearing of headscarves or traditional Muslim face coverings in public.

 

Topics: CP Greece France

Related

Saudi Arabia
Focus to be on partnerships during Saudi crown prince’s visit to France
Special
Business & Economy
Green hydrogen gets a push during Saudi Crown Prince’s visit to Greece

Search underway for American reportedly abducted in southern Philippine town

Updated 8 sec ago
AP
Follow

Search underway for American reportedly abducted in southern Philippine town

  • If confirmed to be a case of kidnapping for ransom, it would be the latest reminder of the long-running security problems that have hounded the southern Philippines
Updated 8 sec ago
AP
MANILA: The Philippine police said Friday it has launched a search after gunmen reportedly abducted an American national, who was shot in the leg as he tried to resist before being spirited away from a southern Philippine coastal town by speedboat.
If confirmed to be a case of kidnapping for ransom, it would be the latest reminder of the long-running security problems that have hounded the southern Philippines, the homeland of a Muslim minority in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
Police in Sibuco town in the southern province of Zamboanga del Norte tried to pursue the suspected abductors and their victim, who they identified as Elliot Onil Eastman, 26, from Vermont, after the reported abduction on Thursday night.
“We confirm that there was a report of the alleged abduction of an American national,” the regional police said in a statement. “We want to assure the public, particularly the community of Sibuco, that we are doing everything in our power to secure the safe recovery of the victim.”
The police asked the public to immediately provide any information that could help an ongoing investigation of the reported abduction.
Two police reports seen by The Associated Press said that a resident of Sibuco, Abdulmali Hamsiran Jala, reported to police that four men in black clothing who were armed with M16 rifles and introduced themselves as police officers forcibly took Eastman, who tried to escape.
One of the gunmen shot Eastman in the leg before dragging him into a speedboat then fled by sea further south toward the provinces of Basilan or Sulu, the police reports said.
Policemen chased but failed to find the gunmen and Eastman and alerted other police and Philippine marine units in the region, according to the reports.
Philippine authorities did not immediately provide background details of Eastman, but a person with a similar name has posted pictures and videos of himself on Facebook saying he had married a Muslim woman in Sibuco.
The US Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to questions about the reported abduction.
The southern Philippines has bountiful resources but has long been hamstrung by stark poverty and an array of insurgents and outlaws.
A 2014 peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest of several Muslim separatist groups, has considerably eased widespread fighting in the south. Relentless military offensives have weakened smaller armed groups like the notoriously violent Abu Sayyaf group over the years, considerably reducing kidnappings, bombings and other attacks.
The Abu Sayyaf group, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the Philippines, is an offshoot of decades-long Muslim separatist unrest in the south and carried out mass kidnappings for ransom, beheadings and bombings more than two decades ago in the southern region.
They targeted American and other Western tourists and religious missionaries, most of whom were freed after ransoms were paid. A few were killed, including an American who was beheaded on the island province of Basilan and a US missionary who was killed while Philippine army forces were trying to rescue him and his wife in 2002 in a rainforest in Sirawai town near Sibuco.
The Philippines will hold mid-term elections next year for more than 18,000 local, national and congressional posts, mostly provincial mayors and governors. In the traditionally volatile south, crimes including kidnappings and extortion have traditionally spiked as rogue politicians try to raise funds to fuel their campaigns ahead of elections in the past but only a few and isolated incidents have been reported in recent years, according to authorities.

US charges Indian agent over alleged plot to kill Sikh separatist

Updated 25 min 51 sec ago
AFP
Follow

US charges Indian agent over alleged plot to kill Sikh separatist

  • Vikash Yadav, 39, who remains at large, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and money laundering
  • Yadav is the second Indian man to be charged in the United States in the alleged plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun
Updated 25 min 51 sec ago
AFP

WASHINGTON: An Indian intelligence official has been indicted for his role in a foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader in the United States, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Vikash Yadav, 39, who remains at large, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and money laundering, the department said.
Yadav is the second Indian national to be charged in the United States in the alleged plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US and Canadian citizen who lives in New York.
Nikhil Gupta, 53, pleaded not guilty in June to involvement in the assassination plot after being extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic.
Pannun is affiliated with a New York-based group called Sikhs for Justice that advocates for the secession of Punjab, a northern Indian state with a large Sikh population.
Pannun, in a statement on X, denounced the alleged assassination plot as a “blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism” and a “threat to freedom of speech and democracy.”
The Justice Department accused Yadav of directing the plot and said he recruited Gupta in May 2023 to hire a hitman to carry out the murder.
Gupta allegedly contacted an individual he believed to be a criminal associate to hire a hitman. The individual was in fact a confidential source working with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
“Yadav, an employee of the Indian government, used his position of authority and access to confidential information to direct the attempted assassination of an outspoken critic of the Indian government here on US soil,” Anne Milgram, the DEA chief, said in a statement.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department “will be relentless in holding accountable any person — regardless of their position or proximity to power — who seeks to harm and silence American citizens.”
According to the Justice Department, Yadav was employed by the Indian government’s Cabinet Secretariat, which houses the country’s foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
The United States said Wednesday it had been informed by India that an intelligence operative accused of directing an assassination plot on US soil was no longer in government service.
“They did inform us that the individual who was named in the Justice Department indictment is no longer an employee of the Indian government,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. “We are satisfied with the cooperation.”
The action by New Delhi represented a sharp contrast to its defiant approach to similar charges from Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday accused India of violating his country’s sovereignty.
Canada has separately alleged that India arranged a plot on its soil that ended in the killing last year of a Sikh separatist, who was a naturalized Canadian citizen, outside a Vancouver temple.
Unlike the United States, Canada has highlighted its concerns publicly and at the highest level, with Trudeau criticizing India’s actions.
Canada and India on Monday expelled each other’s ambassadors as Ottawa said that the Indian campaign went further than previously reported.
India has rejected Canada’s charges and alleged a domestic political motive by Trudeau.
Canada has the largest Sikh community outside of India, concentrated in suburban areas that are critical in national elections.

Nigerians sacrifice cars as cost of living crisis worsens

Updated 31 min 21 sec ago
AFP
Follow

Nigerians sacrifice cars as cost of living crisis worsens

  • The price of petrol has risen more than fivefold since President Bola Tinubu took office in May 2023
  • In the short term, Nigeria has seen one of its worst crises in decades with inflation at a three-decade high
Updated 31 min 21 sec ago
AFP

LAGOS: Nigeria’s economic crisis and soaring petrol prices forced Bolaji Emmanuel to give up his driver and his Honda Pilot utility vehicle, as he struggles with spiking living costs.
Emmanuel is not alone. Many in Africa’s most populous country are abandoning their cars as the costs strain disposable income.
The price of petrol has risen more than fivefold since President Bola Tinubu took office in May 2023.
“I parked it at my son’s house. I use public transport now,” Emmanuel, a 72-year-old retired health worker, said. “It is not convenient, but it is what the economy demands.”
Since coming to power, Tinubu has ended a costly fuel subsidy and freed up the naira currency, in reforms that government officials and analysts say will revive the economy and attract investors.
But in the short term, Nigeria has seen one of its worst crises in decades with inflation at a three-decade high.
A liter of petrol sold for around 195 naira just before Tinubu took office. The price rose to at least 998 naira ($0.61) per liter in Lagos and 1,030 naira in the capital, Abuja, at the beginning of October. It can go for as much as 1,300 naira elsewhere.
Inflation reached an almost three-decade high of 34.19 percent in June. It has since slowed to 32.7 percent in September.
The slump in purchasing power is piling more hardship on locals, with more than 40 percent of the population living in poverty, according to the World Bank. That figure is expected to rise in 2024 and 2025, before it stabilizes in 2026.
The Nigerian middle class, which made up about 20 percent of the population in 2020, now readily sacrifices the comfort of private cars for survival.
Car dealers in Lagos and Abuja said that they had seen more and more people trading their fuel-guzzling cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) for more efficient vehicles to cut costs.
“People are actually selling their big cars these days,” Maji Abubakar, a car dealer in Abuja, said. “The problem is that even if you put them on the market, there isn’t much demand for them.”
“It has been more than a year since I sold a car with an eight-cylinder engine, and the major reason is the price of petrol,” he added.
With fewer cars on the road, even the notorious Lagos traffic, known as “go-slow,” has thinned out.
Elijah Bello, a tech entrepreneur in the southern state of Ogun, has looked for a buyer for his Lexus RX 350 SUV for months.
He has since bought a smaller, energy-saving Toyota Corolla to replace it.
The trend, which began last year, “will intensify” and “we will see fewer cars on the roads,” said Bunmi Bailey, head of research at SBM Intelligence risk consultancy.
Bailey can fill his small car for 55,000 naira. “I can use it for two weeks for my normal home-to-work movement,” he said, while his larger car consumes 110,000 naira worth of petrol in just eight days.
The market for new cars has dropped by 10 to 14 percent in the last year, said Kunle Jaiyesinmi, deputy director at the Lagos-based CFAO Group, which specializes in automobile distribution.
“An SUV that sold for 40 to 45 million naira ($24,000 to $27,000) about two years ago, for now, if you want to negotiate the price, you see that it is within the range of 95 or 100 million ($57,000 to $60,000),” Jaiyesinmi said.
But unyielding inflation and high exchange rates are steering more middle-class people away from used Japanese- and American-brand cars, toward increasingly popular Chinese-made ones.
Some are turning to bicycles, despite the lack of appropriate infrastructure in cities like Lagos, where car crashes are common.
“Sure, we notice (a rise in) cycling... for months since the fuel hike,” said Femi Thomas, head of FT Cycle Care, a Lagos-based organization that promotes cycle use.
Food delivery platform Glovo said it had recorded a growing interest in bicycle deliveries among its riders.
About 20 percent of orders are delivered by bike, Chidera Akwuba, the group’s public relations manager in Nigeria, said.

Topics: Nigeria

Related

World
Nigerian leader has announced economic measures to ease hardship as labor unions threaten protests
World
Nigeria’s president calls for end to protests against economic hardship

India foreign minister’s Pakistan visit a ‘good beginning’, Nawaz Sharif says

Updated 18 October 2024
Reuters
Follow

India foreign minister’s Pakistan visit a ‘good beginning’, Nawaz Sharif says

  • Indian envoy was in Pakistan for a meeting of governments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
  • Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was among nearly a dozen leaders participating in the gathering in Islamabad
Updated 18 October 2024
Reuters

MUMBAI: The visit of India’s foreign minister to Pakistan earlier this week was a “good beginning” that could lead to a thaw in relations between the two rivals, former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was quoted as saying by Indian media on Friday.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was in Pakistan on Tuesday and Wednesday for a meeting of governments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with the capital city under tight lockdown.
“This is how talks move forward. Talks should not stop,” Sharif, the president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League — Nawaz (PML-N), and the brother of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, told a group of visiting Indian journalists, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Jaishankar was among nearly a dozen leaders participating in the gathering in Islamabad, nearly a decade since an Indian foreign minister has visited amid frosty relations between the two nuclear powers.
Jaishankar and his counterpart Ishaq Dar had an “informal interaction,” an official in Pakistani foreign ministry said on Thursday, but New Delhi denied that any sort of meeting had taken place.
“We had made it very clear that this particular visit is for SCO head of government meeting. Other than that, there were some pleasantries exchanged on the sidelines of the meeting,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Thursday.
“We have lost the last 75 years and it is important we don’t lose the next 75 years,” Sharif was quoted as saying in the Times of India newspaper.

Topics: India Pakistan

Related

Update
World
India foreign minister lands in arch-rival Pakistan for rare visit
World
Indian FM’s visit to Pakistan unlikely to thaw frosty ties, experts say

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un calls South Korea a foreign, hostile country

Updated 18 October 2024
Reuters
Follow

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un calls South Korea a foreign, hostile country

  • North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has increasingly lashed out at South Korea this year
  • The reclusive state blasted road and rail links with South Korea this week
Updated 18 October 2024
Reuters

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has described South Korea as a foreign and hostile nation, state media KCNA reported on Friday with photos showing Kim and high-ranking military personnel at a command post poring over a map labelled “Seoul.”
The report comes a day after KCNA said North Korea amended its constitution to designate South Korea a “hostile state” and dropped unification of the two countries as a goal.
Kim has increasingly lashed out at South Korea this year, accusing Seoul of colluding with Washington to seek the collapse of his regime.
The reclusive state blasted road and rail links with South Korea this week. Those actions underscored “not only the physical closure but also the end of the evil relationship with Seoul,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.
Seoul has said that if North Korea were to inflict harm upon the safety of its people, “that day will be the end of the North Korean regime.”
Kim made the remarks while inspecting the headquarters of the 2nd Corps of North Korean army on Thursday, KCNA said. During the visit, he also said the changed nature of the South Korea-US alliance, and their different, more developed military maneuvers highlight the importance of a stronger North Korean nuclear deterrent.
“Kim is trying to mentally fortify the frontline soldiers with his comments” said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
“This ‘two hostile countries’ rhetoric is, in the end, Kim Jong Un’s survival strategy … Don’t interfere, live separately as a hostile country. It’s a path (North Korea) has never gone before, and no one can be sure about its success.”
On Sunday, South Korea will begin annual large-scale military exercises called Hoguk to improve operational performance, the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Friday.

Topics: Kim Jong Un North Korea South Korea

Related

World
North Korea says 1.4 million young people apply to join army
World
North Korea set to blow up cross-border roads with South amid drone row, Seoul says

Latest updates

Hamas leader Sinwar threw stick at drone just before death, according to Israel video
Search underway for American reportedly abducted in southern Philippine town
UNESCO adopts Pakistan-led resolution on countering disinformation globally
US charges Indian agent over alleged plot to kill Sikh separatist
At least 28 dead in Gaza strike on school-turned-shelter

Search form

Print Edition
Read pdf version Subscribe now
© 2024 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.