M’sieur Mouse Receives a <i> Oui</i> for Disneyland

Mickey Mouse got his French passport today for a $2-billion amusement park which Prime Minister Jacques Chirac said even die-hard foes of U.S. culture should support.

“This is a great affair, a great ambition,” Chirac said after signing a contract for Europe’s first Disneyland with Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner.

The park, to be built in the Marne-la-Vallee development zone east of Paris, will be France’s biggest construction project in two decades involving an initial investment of up to $2.6 billion.

The signing of the more than 200-page contract capped nearly two years of complex negotiations dogged by financial haggling and political opposition to what some condemn as a sign of U.S. cultural imperialism.

30,000 Jobs Forecast

But Chirac, describing the deal as unprecedented, suggested the plan would create about 30,000 jobs and had vast popular support.

Eisner said French tradition would be reflected by giving Donald Duck a French accent rather than by introducing home-grown figures like Asterix or other French cartoon heroes.

The most vociferous opposition to the park has come from the French Communist Party, the extreme right-wing National Front, workers in traditional fairgrounds who fear for their future and farmers whose land will be used for the nearly 5,000-acre Disneyland site.

But an opinion poll commissioned by the greater Paris region council shows that 85% of French people approve of the project.

A preliminary contract for the leisure park, which is due to open its doors in 1992, was first signed in December, 1985, by France’s previous socialist government, which beat Spain in a hard-fought battle for the project.