Bilateral trade reaches €10.8 billion as newly appointed Business France CEO outlines future-forward collaborative blueprint during Dubai visit.
DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates and France are aggressively expanding their long-standing strategic economic partnership, pivoting toward future-shaping sectors such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), clean technology, and advanced manufacturing. Louis Margueritte, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer of Business France—the French national agency for international business development—affirmed that the two nations possess powerful complementary economic strengths destined to drive global innovation.
Speaking during a high-profile media dialogue session at the Dubai Press Club on Wednesday, Margueritte highlighted that while defense, traditional energy, infrastructure, and services remain foundational pillars of bilateral ties, the next chapter of cooperation belongs to emerging tech ecosystems. Margueritte, who assumed the leadership of Business France following a presidential decree, engaged with senior institutional leaders and economic officials across the UAE to accelerate direct investment flows and map out long-term industrial synergies.
“The UAE has evolved beyond a vital strategic market for France; it is increasingly becoming an equal partner in building the industries of tomorrow,” Margueritte stated, noting that trusted alliances have become critical anchors amid profound global geopolitical and economic shifts.
The economic corridor between the two nations is experiencing rapid momentum. Bilateral trade between France and the UAE surged to €10.8 billion in 2025, representing an impressive 27 percent increase year-over-year. This robust commercial relationship underpins France’s broader trade footprint in the Gulf region, which reached a total of €24.9 billion. Currently, more than 600 French companies—ranging from multinational conglomerates to tech startups and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs)—actively operate in the Emirates across critical sectors including healthcare, luxury, aerospace, and energy transition.
A central catalyst for the next phase of Franco-Gulf economic integration will be the upcoming Vision Golfe forum, scheduled to take place in Paris on June 18 and 19, 2026. Organised by Business France under the high patronage of French President Emmanuel Macron, the prestigious summit is slated to draw between 1,300 and 1,500 decision-makers, industrial leaders, and institutional investors to the French Ministry for the Economy and Finance.
Framed around the 2026 theme “From Cooperation to Transformation,” the forum will focus heavily on actionable outcomes. The agenda is tailored to match French engineering capabilities and regulatory standards with the Gulf’s rapid digital transformations and diversification targets, explicitly diving into AI deployment, logistics infrastructure, water security, and human capital development. Margueritte emphasized that the core role of Business France extends beyond organizing summits; it aims to move past mere statements of intent by facilitating direct B2B and B2G meetings that convert high-level dialogue into tangible commercial contracts, particularly for mid-sized firms and SMEs.
