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)
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Updated 29 July 2022
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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

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




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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.

 


Russian forces take control of three Ukrainian villages across multiple regions, defense ministry says

Updated 18 July 2025
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Russian forces take control of three Ukrainian villages across multiple regions, defense ministry says

  • Russian forces are engaged in a slow advance westward and Moscow announces the capture of new villages almost every day
  • Moscow controls a little less than 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, a move that Kyiv and most Western countries reject as illegal

MOSCOW: Russian troops have taken control of three villages in three different parts of the frontline running through Ukraine, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
Official Ukrainian reports of activity along the 1,000-km (600-mile) front disputed part of the Russian account, particularly concerning a key village in the southeast.
Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports from either side.
The Russian Defense Ministry report named the three captured settlements as Kamianske in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, Dehtiarne in northeastern Kharkiv region, and Popiv Yar in Donetsk region, the main theater of Russian operations.
Russian forces are engaged in a slow advance westward, mainly through Donetsk region, and Moscow announces the capture of new villages almost every day.
Ukrainian military spokesperson Vladyslav Voloshyn told the liga.net media outlet that holding Kamianske, southeast of the region’s main town of Zaporizhzhia, was important to keep that city safe from attack.
But Kamianske had been all but flattened by long periods of fighting, he said. Ukrainian forces had moved out of it and successfully attacked Russian troops whenever small groups periodically ventured into it.
“The Russians cannot go into the village and hold it,” Voloshyn was quoted as saying. “There is not a single dwelling left intact, not a single wall left standing, nothing to hold, nothing to enable you to take cover.”
There was no acknowledgement from Ukraine that Popiv Yar had changed hands — the village lies northeast of Pokrovsk, for months a focal point of Russian attacks in Donetsk region.
For at least a week, it has remained in the “grey zone” of uncertain control as reported by DeepState, a Ukrainian military blog based on open source accounts of the fighting. There was no news from Ukrainian officials of the situation at Dehtiarne.
On Wednesday, Russia’s military announced the capture of the village of Novohatske, southwest of Pokrovsk. Another Ukrainian military spokesperson, Viktor Trehubov, told public broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday that the village was in Russian hands.
Moscow controls a little less than 20 percent of Ukrainian territory and says it has incorporated four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson into Russia, a move that Kyiv and most Western countries reject as illegal.
In 2014, Russia seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, also a claim widely disputed internationally


Nationwide protests begin against Trump’s immigration crackdown and health care cuts

Updated 18 July 2025
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Nationwide protests begin against Trump’s immigration crackdown and health care cuts

  • Protest actions held Thursday in more than 1,600 locations around the country
  • Major protests planned in Atlanta and St. Louis, Oakland in California, and Annapolis in Maryland

CHICAGO: Protests and events against President Donald Trump’s controversial policies that include mass deportations and cuts to Medicaid and other safety nets for poor people have started Thursday at more than 1,600 locations around the country.
The “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action honors the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. Protests were being held along streets, at court houses and other public spaces. Organizers have called for them to be peaceful.
“We are navigating one of the most terrifying moments in our nation’s history,” Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said during an online news conference Tuesday. “We are all grappling with a rise of authoritarianism and lawlessness within our administration ... as the rights, freedoms and expectations of our very democracy are being challenged.”
Public Citizen is a nonprofit with a stated mission of taking on corporate power. It is a member of a coalition of groups behind Thursday’s protests.
Major protests were planned in Atlanta and St. Louis, as well as Oakland, California, and Annapolis, Maryland.
Honoring Lewis’ legacy
Lewis first was elected to Congress in 1986. He died in 2020 at the age of 80 following an advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965, a 25-year-old Lewis led some 600 protesters in the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Lewis was beaten by police, suffering a skull fracture.
Within days, King led more marches in the state, and President Lyndon Johnson pressed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act that later became law.
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America,” Lewis said in 2020 while commemorating the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Chicago will be the flagship city for Thursday’s protests as demonstrators are expected to rally downtown in the afternoon.
Betty Magness, executive vice president of the League of Women Voters Chicago and one of the organizers of Chicago’s event, said the rally will also include a candlelight vigil to honor Lewis.
Much of the rest of the rally will have a livelier tone, Magness said, adding “we have a DJ who’s gonna rock us with boots on the ground.”
Protesting Trump’s policies
Pushback against Trump so far in his second term has centered on deportations and immigration enforcement tactics
Earlier this month, protesters engaged in a tense standoff as federal authorities conducted mass arrests at two Southern California marijuana farms. One farmworker died after falling from a greenhouse roof during a chaotic raid.
Those raids followed Trump’s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard outside federal buildings and to protect immigration agents carrying out arrests on Los Angeles. On June 8, thousands of protesters began taking to the streets in Los Angeles.
And organizers of the June 14 “No Kings” demonstrations said millions of people marched in hundreds of events from New York to San Francisco. Demonstrators labeled Trump as a dictator and would-be king for marking his birthday with a military parade.
 


UK signs treaty on defense, trade and migration with Germany as Europe bolsters security

Updated 18 July 2025
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UK signs treaty on defense, trade and migration with Germany as Europe bolsters security

  • Agreement commits both countries to boost investment and strengthen law-enforcement cooperation against people-smuggling gangs
  • Treaty builds on defense pact the two nations signed last year committing to closer co-operation against the growing threat from Russia

LONDON: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz signed a landmark treaty on Thursday that pledges to tighten defense ties, as European nations try to protect Ukraine, and themselves, from an aggressive Russia in the face of wavering support from President Donald Trump’s US-focused administration.
Merz said it was “a historic day for German-British relations” as he signed an agreement that also commits the two countries to boost investment and strengthen law-enforcement cooperation against criminal people-smuggling gangs using the English Channel.
“We want to work together more closely, particularly after the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union,” Merz said. “It is overdue for us to conclude such a treaty with each other.”
A partnership with a purpose
The treaty builds on a defense pact the UK and Germany, two of the biggest European supporters of Ukraine, signed last year committing to closer co-operation against the growing threat from Russia.
It includes a promise to “assist one another, including by military means, in case of an armed attack on the other,” though it’s unclear what practical impact that will have, since both countries are NATO members and bound by the alliance’s mutual defense pact.
Starmer said the treaty — signed at London’s V&A Museum, which is named after Queen Victoria and her German husband, Prince Albert — sealed a “partnership with a purpose.”
“We see the scale of the challenges our continent faces today, and we intend to meet them head on,” Starmer said during a joint news confernce at an Airbus defense and space factory north of London.
The UK-Germany treaty follows agreements signed during a state visit last week by President Emmanuel Macron, in which France and Britain pledged to coordinate their nuclear deterrents for the first time.
Germany does not have nuclear weapons. The treaty with Britain says the countries will “maintain a close dialogue on defense issues of mutual interest ... including on nuclear issues.”
The treaty stressed a “shared commitment to the security of the Euro-Atlantic area, and underpinned by enhanced European contributions” — a nod to Trump, who has demanded European NATO members greatly increase military spending. Germany and the UK have both promised to raise defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP in the coming years.
Merz, making his first trip to the UK since taking office in May, said it was “no coincidence” he traveled to London a week after Macron.
“The E3 – Great Britain, France and Germany — are converging in their positions on foreign policy, on security policy, on migration policy, but also on economic policy issues,” he said.
Weapons for Ukraine
Merz and Starmer discussed ways to boost European support for Ukraine, following Trump’s announcement of a plan to bolster Kyiv’s stockpile by selling American weapons to NATO allies who would in turn send arms to Kyiv.
Merz signaled that those plans are still a work in progress, saying it might take “days, perhaps weeks” before weapons reach Ukraine.
He said that “above all, we need clarity on how weapons systems that are given up from the European side will be replaced by the US”
During the trip the leaders announced that German defense startup Stark, which makes drones for Ukraine, will open a factory in England. They also agreed to jointly produce defense exports such as Boxer armored vehicles and Typhoon jets, and to develop a deep precision strike missile in the next decade.
Starmer also praised Merz for his help curbing the smuggling gangs that brought 37,000 people across the English Channel from France in small boats in 2024, and more than 22,000 so far in 2025. Dozens have died attempting the journey.
Berlin agreed last year to make facilitating the smuggling of migrants to the UK a criminal offense, a move that will give law enforcement more powers to investigate the supply and storage of small boats to be used for the crossings.
Merz committed to adopting the law change by the end of the year, a move Starmer said “is hugely welcome.”
Student exchange trips
Starmer has worked to improve relations with Britain’s neighbors, strained by the UK’s acrimonious departure from the European Union in 2020. He has sought to rebuild ties strained by years of ill-tempered wrangling over Brexit terms, and worked to reduce trade barriers and to strengthen defense cooperation.
But he has ruled out rejoining the 27-nation bloc’s single market or customs union, and has been cool to the idea of a youth mobility agreement with the EU.
Britain and Germany agreed on a more limited arrangement that will make it easier for schoolchildren to go on exchange trips.
“I am glad we were able to reach an agreement so that schoolchildren and students can come to Britain more easily in the future, and the other way round can come to Germany more easily, so that the young generation in particular has an opportunity to get to know both countries better,” Merz said.
 


5 US immigrants deported to Eswatini in Africa are being held in solitary confinement

Updated 18 July 2025
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5 US immigrants deported to Eswatini in Africa are being held in solitary confinement

  • The men , who the US says were convicted of serious crimes and were in the US illegally, are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos
  • Eswatini is the latest nation to accept third-country deportees from the US. The others are Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, and South Sudan

CAPE TOWN, South Africa: Five immigrants deported by the United States to the small southern African nation of Eswatini under the Trump administration’s third-country program are in prison, where they will be held in solitary confinement for an undetermined time, a government spokesperson said.
Thabile Mdluli, the spokesperson, declined to identify the correctional facility or facilities where the five men are, citing security concerns. She said Eswatini planned to ultimately repatriate the five to their home countries with the help of a United Nations agency.
In cell phone messages to The Associated Press on Thursday, Mdluli said it wasn’t clear how long that would take.
The men, who the US says were convicted of serious crimes and were in the US illegally, are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos. Their convictions included murder and child rape, the US Department of Homeland

Security said, describing them as “uniquely barbaric.”
Their deportations were announced by Homeland Security on Tuesday and mark the continuation of President Donald Trump’s plan to send deportees to third countries they have no ties with after it was stalled by a legal challenge in the United States.
Here’s what we know and don’t know about the deportations:
A new country for deportees
Eswatini, a country of 1.2 million people bordering South Africa, is the latest nation to accept third-country deportees from the US. The Trump administration has sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama, and deported eight men earlier this month to South Sudan, also an African country.
The deportees to South Sudan are citizens of Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan. They were held for weeks in a converted shipping container at a US military base in the nearby country of Djibouti until a Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for them to be finally sent to South Sudan. The US also described them as violent criminals.
Eswatini’s government confirmed on Wednesday that the latest five deportees were in its custody after landing on a deportation plane from the US.
Local media reported they are being held at the Matsapha Correctional Complex, outside the country’s administrative capital of Mbabane, which includes Eswatini’s top maximum-security prison.
The men’s fate is unclear
The Eswatini government said the men are “in transit” and will eventually be sent to their home countries. The US and Eswatini governments would work with the UN migration agency to do that, it said.
The UN agency — the International Organization for Migration or IOM — said it was not involved in the operation and has not been approached to assist in the matter but would be willing to help “in line with its humanitarian mandate.”
Eswatini’s statement that the men would be sent home was in contrast to US claims they were sent to Eswatini because their home countries refused to take them back.
It’s unclear how sending the men to Eswatini would make it easier for them to be deported home. There was also no timeframe for that as it depends on several factors, including engagements with the IOM, Mdluli said.
“We are not yet in a position to determine the timelines for the repatriation,” she wrote.
Four of the five countries where the men are from have historically resisted taking back some of their citizens deported from the US, which has been a reoccurring problem for Homeland Security. Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the administration was happy the men were “off of American soil” when she announced their deportations.
Another secretive deal
There have been no details on why Eswatini agreed to take the men and Mdluli, the government spokesperson, said “the terms of the agreement between the US and Eswatini remain classified.”
Eswatini has said it was the result of months of negotiations between the two governments. South Sudan has also given no details of its agreement with the US to take deportees and has declined to say where the eight men sent there are being held.
Some analysts say African nations might be willing to take deportees from the US in return for more favorable relations with the Trump administration, which has cut foreign aid to poor countries and threatened them with trade tariffs.
The Trump administration has also said it’s seeking more deportation deals with other countries.
Rights groups have questioned the countries the US has chosen to deal with, as South Sudan and Eswatini have both been criticized for having repressive governments.
Eswatini is Africa’s only absolute monarchy, meaning the king has power over government and rules by decree. Political parties are banned and pro-democracy protests have been quelled violently in the past.
Several rights groups have criticized Eswatini since pro-democracy protests erupted there in 2021, citing deadly crackdowns by security forces and abusive conditions in prisons, including at the Matsapha Correctional Complex, where pro-democracy activists are held.


UN chief calls Cyprus peace talks ‘constructive’

Updated 18 July 2025
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UN chief calls Cyprus peace talks ‘constructive’

  • Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion followed a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta

UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that meetings between Cyprus’s rival leaders at the organization’s New York headquarters were “constructive,” even as questions remained about crossing points on the divided island.
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar have been holding talks and had reached a breakthrough on forming a committee on youth and three other topics, Guterres said.
The opening of four crossing points, and the exploitation of solar energy in the buffer zone between the two sides of the island remained unresolved, he said.
“It is critical to implement these initiatives, all of them, as soon as possible, and for the benefit of all Cypriots,” Guterres said.
The meeting follows one in Geneva in March, which marked the first meaningful progress in years.
At that gathering, both sides agreed on a set of confidence-building measures, including opening more crossing points across the divide, cooperating on solar energy, and removing land mines.
Guterres said there were specific technical issues still to be resolved on the issues of crossing points, but did not give details.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion followed a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, declared in 1983, is recognized only by Ankara.
The internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union, controls the island’s majority Greek Cypriot south.
The last major round of peace talks collapsed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in July 2017.
“I think we are building, step-by-step, confidence and creating conditions to do concrete things to benefit the Cypriot people,” Guterres said in remarks to reporters.