PARIS (Dispatches) -- France and Saudi Arabia on Tuesday unveiled a €6 billion theme park project near Paris, following talks between Emmanuel Macron and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. 
The Qiddiya-led development will feature three parks—including a manga-themed zone inspired by Dragon Ball Z—near Cergy-Pontoise, promising 22,000 jobs. Macron hailed it as a “new global destination” and a victory for his “Choose France” investment drive.
Alongside the park, deals were signed with CMA CGM ($434 million) and Alstom ($580 million), plus a military cooperation letter of intent. The leaders also issued a joint statement backing Palestinian statehood, condemning Yemeni retaliation, and calling for a negotiated U.S.-Iran settlement.
Yet beneath the gilded rhetoric lies a grimmer reality. The visit marks MBS’s first foreign trip since signing a military pact with Turkiye and Pakistan—part of a broader Saudi pivot that France is desperate to latch onto. 
Macron’s embrace of the crown prince, still tainted by the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, has drawn sharp rebukes from human rights groups and press freedom organizations. A French investigation into the killing remains open, making the Elysée’s red-carpet reception a calculated insult to justice.
Domestically, the project has sparked outrage. Right-wing politicians decry it as a cultural betrayal—an import of Japanese pop culture onto French soil, devoid of national identity. 
Ecologists warn of environmental devastation: the 200-hectare site sits on agricultural land near the protected Vexin Natural Park, with no credible impact assessment yet produced. The ghost of the abandoned EuropaCity project looms large, raising suspicions that this is another unsustainable vanity exercise.
Critics also point to the glaring hypocrisy. Macron’s government speaks of human rights while cozying up to a regime that jailed activists, waged war in Yemen, and orchestrated a brutal embargo on Qatar. The defense pact, meanwhile, funnels French expertise to a monarchy that has shown little regard for democratic norms.
Macron’s office defensively insisted, “At no point... do we seek to lecture others.”