Diplomacy, the tone rises between France and Algeria

Between Algiers and Paris, nothing is going well: “Algeria seeks to humiliate France”, said Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, after the Algerian authorities refused to take back one of their deported nationals.

“Dualemn”a 59-year-old influencer, was arrested in Montpellier in the south of France, after a contentious video on TikTok in which he called for physically attacking an Algerian opponent. He was put on a plane Thursday January 9 for Algeria before being sent back to France the same evening, Algeria having “inadmissible”.

“I issued an expulsion order and the Algerian authorities did not want to let him land on Algerian soil, in total contradiction with the rules”deplored Friday January 10 Bruno Retailleau. “We have reached an extremely worrying threshold with Algeria. I think that France cannot tolerate this situation”.

In the process, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot judged that if “the Algerians continue this posture of escalation”, then France will not have “no other option than to retaliate.”

Franco-Algerian relations deteriorated since July

This outbreak of fever is a new episode which has worsened Franco-Algerian relations which have already been tense for several months. These tensions appeared when France changed its doctrine on Western Sahara, in July 2024. This former Spanish colony with undefined status at the UN has been the scene of a conflict for half a century between Morocco and the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers.

At the end of July, President Emmanuel Macron chose to join Spain and the United States to believe that the future of Western Sahara is “within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty”. This position made it possible to normalize relations with Morocco, but caused a new crisis with Algeria.

Since then, the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, 75, was arrested in mid-November in Algeria for endangering state security and is still detained, despite his illness.

Emmanuel Macron evokes a “dishonor”

“The Algeria that we love so much and with which we share so many children and so many stories is entering into a story that dishonors it, preventing a seriously ill man from getting treatment. It’s not up to what it is.”commented Emmanuel Macron to the French ambassadors gathered at the Élysée on January 6.

This sentence triggered a new indignant reaction from the Algerian authorities who considered that it was a “shameless and unacceptable interference in an internal Algerian matter”.

Among the retaliatory measures that France could implement, Jean-Noël Barrot cited: “visas, development aid” or even “a number of other subjects of cooperation”. Traveling to Nantes (west), headquarters of the central civil status service, Bruno Retailleau also hoped that in the future, France would issue “fewer visas”.

Attal for more “firmness”

For his part, former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal called for denouncing the 1968 Franco-Algerian agreement, to “set the limits and assume the balance of power with Algeria”. In a column published by Le Figaro, he deplores “the provocations and insults of the regime’s hierarchs” Algerian and asks to leave this agreement which offers certain advantages to Algerians to travel and stay in France.

This agreement “has today become an immigration channel in its own right, allowing family reunification and the settlement of people, without them even having to know our language or show their integration”accuses Gabriel Attal. “It makes it practically impossible to withdraw residence permits from Algerian nationals, even for reasons of public order”.

Faced with the Algerian regime which “sweep away all our outstretched hands and continue to test our country”, “the time for firmness has come”writes the boss of Renaissance who wishes to remind us that “France is a great power”that“we don’t intimidate” and that“we do not provoke without consequences”.