Emmanuel Macron returns to Algeria. The French president begins a three-day official visit on Thursday, August 25. A movement above all turned towards the “youth and the future”, according to the Elysee. This is the second time that President Macron has visited Algeria since his first election in 2017. The visit aims to “laying a foundation for rebuilding, developing” the relationship between Paris and Algiers, insisted the French presidency. “Refound”as the relationship between the two countries was strained after a series of diplomatic misunderstandings in the fall.
Memorial issue, war in Ukraine and Algerian gas, visas, security in the Sahel… Franceinfo details the challenges of Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Algeria.
The difficult memory equation
If it is not supposed to be at the heart of the president’s trip, the memorial question is on everyone’s mind. This visit comes at the end of a sequence loaded with symbols with the 60th anniversary of the Evian agreements, on March 18, and the independence of Algeria, on July 5. Still a candidate in 2017, Emmanuel Macron had struck the spirits by qualifying the colonization of “crime against humanity”. He has since multiplied memorial gestures. But Algeria deplored that the French president does not express “repentance” for the 132 years of French colonization.
After months of tension, Emmanuel Macron, for his part, criticized the Algerian power for exploiting the “memorial pension” independence war to maintain its legitimacy and wondered about the existence of an Algerian nation before colonization. Even within his own camp, this question is debated. “Among his advisers, among the political forces on which [Emmanuel Macron] relies or from which he hopes for more or less tacit support, there are different points of view”noted Sunday on franceinfo the historian Gilles Manceron, pointing a “strong colonial nostalgia” on the far right, but also “in part of the French right”.
After this statement by Emmanuel Macron, Algeria even recalled its ambassador for three months. The French president now intends “continue the work of appeasement of memories”. He will go to the Saint-Eugène cemetery in Algiers, where many Frenchmen born in Algeria rest, but this is not “not the primary objective of this visit”notes the Elysée.
Gas, a trump card for Algeria
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Europe has been eyeing Algerian gas. The country, one of the world’s ten largest gas producers, has become a highly coveted partner for Europeans anxious to reduce their dependence on Russian gas.
France, which wants to diversify its gas sources, is no exception. “The energy crisis will be one of the issues that will be on the table”, confirmed Olivier Véran, the government spokesperson, at the exit of the Council of Ministers, Wednesday. “The French president will certainly ask Algeria to make an effort to try to increase its gas production”, anticipates the Algerian economist Abderrahmane Mebtoul. But “if the French want more, they have to invest” in the gas industry and renewable energies in Algeria, according to the specialist. Algeria has become Italy’s leading supplier in recent months, via the Transmed gas pipeline which passes through Tunisia.
Visas, “nerve of war”
In September, Paris halved the number of visas granted to Algeria – as in Morocco – to pressure governments deemed uncooperative in the readmission of their nationals expelled from France.
“The reduction in the number of visas has significant effects in Algeria. This creates pressure on the Algerian power”, underlines Xavier Driencourt, former ambassador of France in Algeria. A measure that marked the first act of a series of tensions between the two countries in the fall.
The two capitals want “to advance” on this subject, however, notes the Elysée, stressing that since March 2022, the Algerian authorities have issued “300 passes (for returns), compared to 17 over the same period in 2021 and 91 in 2020”. Paris thus hopes for a “lift” next of the last “blockages” on this point.
Regional security issues
If it is difficult to know in advance the content of the discussions, we guess that the issue of security will be on the table. “The security issue in a region plagued by jihadism should also be on the menu of discussions”assures the political scientist specializing in sub-Saharan Africa Michel Galy, to France 24.
The President of the Republic should “discuss cooperation on military issues in the Sahel”, has also confirmed the government spokesman Olivier Véran. “President Macron knows that without the collaboration of Algiers, it is very difficult to register the slightest breakthrough in the Sahel and Libya files”notes Hasni Abidi, director of the Center for Studies and Research on the Arab and Mediterranean World in Geneva.
Algeria claims an important role in Mali, from which the French army has just withdrawn, and maintains “excellent relations” with the military junta in power in Bamako, continues the expert, also noting the “important relationships” of Algiers with Niamey and other African capitals.
Human rights violated, according to Algerian NGOs
NGOs denounce a turn of the regime, which stifled the popular protest movement of Hirak, at the origin of the fall of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019. A dozen organizations of the Algerian diaspora urge Emmanuel Macron to “do not conceal” the subject of rights and freedoms during his visit. They claim toyears an open letter that the “some achievements” in terms of freedom of expression, demonstration or freedom of the press in Algeria “are in sharp decline, even in the process of disappearing”.
Despite releases in recent months, around 250 people are still being held in Algerian prisons for crimes of opinion, according to the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees (CNLD).