The tension rises from a notch. Rather inclined to calm the game with Algeria for months, while Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau is often on an opposite line, Emmanuel Macron seems to have resolved to change his method.
Indeed, in a letter addressed to his Prime Minister François Bayrou, as Le Figaro got, the President of the Republic invokes the “reserved fate” in Boualem Sansal and Christophe Gleizes to ask the French government “additional decisions” in the face of “growing difficulties” with the Algiers regime.
Among the measures mentioned in this document, the Head of State calls for “formally” suspending the 2013 agreement with Algiers “concerning visa exemptions on official and diplomatic passports”.
Pressure on Algeria
A decision which acts a situation of fact: the Minister of French Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, announced on May 14 “the dismissal 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 “immediately” use a provision of the 2024 immigration law, the “Visa-Readmission lever (LVR)” which “allows you to refuse short stay visas for service and diplomatic passport holders, as are long stay visas for all types of applicants”.
Bruno Retailleau at the heart of the strategy
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 recovery will allow us to admit five other consuls awaiting authorization,” writes the French president.
“The response of the Algerian authorities to our requirements for migration and consular cooperation will determine the rest of our steps,” continues Mr. Macron, adding that “as soon as 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 pending memorials ”.