The UAE is an important market and an increasingly strategic economic partner, Business France chief executive Louis Margueritte has told The National.
Mr Margueritte is on a two-day visit to Dubai aimed at strengthening partnerships before next month’s Vision Golfe Forum in Paris, which will bring together policymakers and business leaders, with organisers stressing that investment flows and project pipelines remain broadly resilient.
The forum is aimed at deepening economic ties between France and the Gulf. He noted that the plans were going ahead despite the Iran war.
The UAE is one of France’s largest export markets, with bilateral trade reaching about €10 billion ($11.6 billion) annually. This figure rises to more than €25 billion across the Gulf Co-operation Council region. For Mr Margueritte, the public establishment “accounts for a significant share of the rise in these figures each year”.
Several UAE ministers have been invited to attend, Mr Margueritte said.
“Nearly 500 decision-makers from the Gulf are expected, with, we hope, 1,300 participants overall. There may be some impact because of the [Iran] crisis, but we are working on a fairly similar model,” he said.
The forum on June 18 and 19 will feature meetings and conferences on topics such as artificial intelligence, green technology, defence and critical infrastructure resilience, within the broader framework of France-Gulf economic relations.
“Companies come to us asking who they should talk to, how to structure meetings and how to connect with the right people. We bring the right counterparts together,” Mr Margueritte said.
“Our core is about building connections, but we go beyond that. We help connect a need that a French company has with a need that an Emirati company has, and vice versa.”
Business France generates about €3 billion of the €600 billion in national global exports each year, he said.
The UAE has worked to integrate AI across many parts of life. The country recently secured the top ranking for AI adoption in Microsoft‘s annual AI economy report.
That adoption has translated into vast interest and investment from various international technology companies.
Certain investments in uncertain times
“The message we want to deliver to companies is that it is not the time to sleep, even in a difficult situation,” Business France regional director Axel Baroux told The National. “It may actually be the time to prepare the future.”
The Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have sent shockwaves across the region and beyond as global prices surge.
Recovery will take time, especially in the tourism and retail sectors, Mr Baroux said, but investments in long-term projects have not been significantly affected.
Mr Margueritte stressed that the regional developments had not had negative repercussions on investment plans. “There are no cancellations of investments either from this region towards Paris, or from France towards the GCC,” he said.
“If an agreement is reached, the projects will go ahead. The fact that we are maintaining the Vision Golfe Forum is very important in this context.”
Vision Golfe is part of a broader project to ensure that France remains attractive worldwide. On June 1, the Choose France forum will take place, “with many business influential people coming from the region”, said Mr Margueritte.
According to the EY barometer, France remains, for the seventh year in a row, the most attractive country in Europe, despite a 17 per cent decrease in investment projects in 2025 compared to 2024.
Why France?
Mr Margueritte is clear on what he believes France offers.
“We have three main things that we bring: firstly, space,” he said. “We are building a very large campus with training facilities in the Parisian suburbs. Then we have easy, competitive access to energy. With our nuclear programme, we have among the cheapest electricity in Europe. Third is our network. France has highly integrated networks, with universities closely linked to companies’ ecosystems.”
The business relationship between France and the UAE is almost natural, he said, especially in areas such as AI and technology. “We have strong capabilities in transport, logistics and education. In Dubai, you have similar strengths but also a high degree of flexibility, innovation and strong institutions that support investment.”
Linking these two areas of strength allows collaboration, with a focus on midsized French firms – with between 250 and 5,000 employees – who need “the right person to be linked to the right person from the other company”. Business France currently has 2,000 partners, with an objective of reaching 3,000 next year.
Business France was founded in 2023 under the patronage of French President Emmanuel Macron. It aims to maintain an economic foothold in countries around the world by fostering relationships.
The UAE has been expanding economic deals and trade with the EU, as well as separately with member states. The UAE and the EU began negotiations last year on a Strategic Partnership Agreement to deepen ties between the Arab world’s second-largest economy and the bloc.
This followed negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (Cepa) between the Emirates and the EU.