After nearly a century since it last hosted the World Expo, France has recruited youth from around the world to campaign for Paris to host it again in 2025.

One of the 100 young people from 70 countries acting as France’s brand ambassadors for the 2025 World Expo, organized by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), is Mutia Fitriani Baehaki. She said Indonesia should support France’s bid because of the country’s vision for science and the environment.

“France’s bid involves a lot of academics and stakeholders who care about the future of our planet,” the 20-year-old woman told reporters in Jakarta on Wednesday. “Hopefully, we can promote the innovations Indonesia has made in the 2025 World Expo.”

France’s bid will be voted on by the 170 BIE member states, including Indonesia, in a secret ballot at the BIE’s 164th general assembly in mid-November this year. Other bidders for the 2025 event are Baku in Azerbaijan, Osaka in Japan and Yekaterinburg in Russia. Speaking at the France Embassy, the former director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Pascal Lamy said France had been a “big mover” in the World Expo.

Also known as the World’s Fair, the event came out of the French tradition of exhibiting achievements, with the first World Expo being held in London, England, in 1851. Since then they have been held every five years. Paris has hosted world’s fairs several times, with one of the most famous one in 1889 fair when the Eiffel Tower was built for its entrance.

“In the 1900s we organized other famous international exhibitions. Since then France has not organized such exhibitions and we decided to reconnect with this tradition for 2025,” Lamy said.

He said that France had ensured that it had made a better offer because the country proposed a relevant theme: “It’s a cross section of science on one side and the environment on the other side.”

The campaigners decided to propose the theme after asking millennials being recruited what they would like to discuss. The answer was, Lamy said, the hope of science and fear for the planet.

Other bidders focused on health, cutting-edge technologies, changing the world and human capital.

“We know we have serious competitors, but we believe that mobilizing notably young generations with the theme looking to the future is why we believe we will win,” Lamy said.

Unlike most previous fairs held in Paris, France does not plan to have it in the Champ de Mars, but in the “Global Village” on the University of Paris-Saclay campus. Lamy added that after the exhibition it would be used as an international campus residence.

The country expects roughly 40 million visits to the 2025 World’ Fair, which is half the tourists expected in 2024 when it is hosting the Summer Olympics.

Lamy said the fact that France had been selected to hold the Olympics in 2024 meant that the country was considered capable of ensuring security.

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