French diplomats saw the agreement as win-win: a way to extend the country’s soft power through cultural diplomacy while also opening up possible new revenue streams for French businesses. They pointed to the Louvre Abu Dhabi as an example, a museum for which the Emiratis paid €400 million for the rights to use the Louvre name.
But the project was derailed shortly after the signing ceremony when the assassination of journalist and Saudi regime critic Jamal Khashoggi sparked widespread outrage and renewed scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights.
In the fall 2019 issue of Politique Internationale magazine, the president of the French agency for the development of AlUla, Gérard Mestrallet, said he still hoped that the fund would be used “to finance civil works, ancient bridges, provincial castles or small churches which, unlike Notre-Dame, are not fortunate enough to mobilize donors.”
The years that followed were marked by intermittent periods of silence, repeated relaunches, slow-going negotiations and multiple downward revisions of the Saudis’ financial contribution.
“Everything has been done to ensure that this thing drags on and that the sum is reduced. Before, the Saudis might have wanted to please other countries, [but] they think today of themselves first,” the president of a French cultural establishment said.
Ministers cross the desert
French and Saudi negotiators finally met to once and for all agree to the terms and conditions of the agreement on January 31, 2022. Among those attending the meeting were Jean-Yves le Drian and Roselyne Bachelot, the foreign and cultural ministers at the time, respectively.
