French President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted France to be firmer in his relations and expectations with Algeria.
France must act “with more firmness and determination” opposite Algeria, urged Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday who invokes the “reserved fate” in Boualem Sansal and Christophe Gleizes to ask the French government “additional decisions”.
To justify this screw tower, Emmanuel Macron first mentions the imprisonments of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, sentenced to 5 years of prison in particular for “attack on national unity”, and the French journalist Christophe Gleizes, sentenced to seven years in prison in Algeria for “apology for terrorism”.
However, it also refers to the “non-compliance by Algeria of its obligations” in migration matters, as well as “the cessation of the cooperation of the 18 Algerian consulates present on our soil with the State services”.
Return to “Visa exemptions”
Among the measures requested from the government, the head of state calls for “formally” suspending the 2013 agreement with Algiers “concerning visa exemptions on official and diplomatic passports”.
A decision which acts a situation of fact: the Minister of French Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, had announced on May 14 “the return to Algeria of all the holding agents of diplomatic passports who would not currently have a visa”. France then reacted to an “unjustified and unjustifiable” decision of Algiers to expel French officials, he said.
Emmanuel Macron also asks the government to use “immediately” to a provision of the 2024 immigration law, the “Visa-Réadmission lever (LVR)” which “refuses short stay visas for service and diplomatic passport holders, as are long stay visas for all types of applicants”.
“Useful cooperation”
The President also asks his Prime Minister “to instruct the Minister of the Interior”, Bruno Retailleau, holding a hard line towards Algiers, “to find the ways and means of useful cooperation with his Algerian counterpart” as quickly as possible “. He “also hopes that, faced with the delinquency of Algerian individuals in an irregular situation, the Minister of the Interior and his services act without rest and without respite”.
“In the same spirit, when you consider that the conditions are met with regard to our diplomatic system, you will be able to authorize the three Algerian consuls already present in our territory to exercise their mandate, however demanding a resumption of migratory cooperation”. “Only this cover will allow us to admit five other consuls awaiting authorization,” writes the French president.
“The response of the Algerian authorities to our requirements in terms of migration and consular cooperation will determine the rest of our steps”, continues Mr. Macron, adding that “as soon as the dialogue has been restored, we will also have to deal with other sensitive bilateral files”, citing “hospital debt”, “the leaders of certain services of the Algerian state on the national territory, Memorials pending “.