Saudi Arabia will spend €6 billion to build a massive entertainment complex featuring three theme parks near Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron announced.
Among the attractions planned is a park centered around manga © Mena Today
Saudi Arabia will spend €6 billion to build a massive entertainment complex featuring three theme parks near Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron announced.
Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed an agreement on Monday at the Élysée Palace, formalizing the deal to build what the French leader described as "a new global destination." The project is expected to create 22,000 jobs, according to Macron.
Beyond the theme parks themselves, the sprawling development will also include hotels, catering facilities, and housing for young workers and students, Macron said. The site chosen for the complex is the former location of Mirapolis, a once-popular theme park north of Paris that has stood shuttered since 1991.
Among the attractions planned is a park centered around manga, reflecting growing interest in Japanese pop culture among European audiences.
Further details on the remaining two parks, as well as a construction timeline, have yet to be disclosed.
The deal marks one of the largest foreign investments in French tourism infrastructure in recent years and underscores Saudi Arabia's continued push to diversify its economic interests abroad, alongside its own ambitious domestic entertainment and tourism projects under the kingdom's Vision 2030 plan.
As Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi militants swept through the battered country's Red Sea coastline, thousands of panicked people fled to makeshift camps, adding to an already vast population of internally displaced people.
Middle East diplomacy appeared to falter heading into Monday with the postponement of a meeting between Iran and other Gulf powers, while attacks around the region's two most important oil transit routes deepened concern over global energy supplies.
New strikes on Saudi Arabia and on ships in the Gulf tested nerves in the Middle East on Sunday, after an attack on a Saudi oil pipeline and an advance by Yemen's Houthis threatened to worsen the wartime disruption to global energy supplies.
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