A form of “give and take”: this is what Emmanuel Macron wants to install on immigration. The president advocated a “renewed partnership“based on youth, the diaspora and innovation to relaunch”love story“which links France to Algeria, on the second day of his official visit to this country.
>> Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Algeria: scheduled signing of a “renewed partnership” agreement between the two countries
In front of the French community in Algiers, he announced by surprise that he would return after Oran to the capital on Saturday for “sign a joint statement” with his counterpart Abdelmajid Tebboune. According to the Elysée, it will be a “renewed, concrete and ambitious partnership”. And the Head of State to specify, after a meeting with young Algiers who challenged him on visa problems, the decline of French in Algeria and the memorial dispute between the two countries, that it will be “a new partnership for and by young people“.
At the heart of the discussions: the acceptance of 8,000 more Algerian students this year in France, who will join an annual contingent of 30,000 young people. In addition to the memory file around French colonization, the issue of visas poisoned the bilateral relationship when Paris decided in the fall of 2021 to halve the number granted in Algeria, deemed not quick enough to readmit its nationals expelled from France. Because immigration was one of the subjects at the heart of the face-to-face exchange, until the middle of the night from Thursday to Friday, with President Tebboune. Paris is doing everything to ensure that the subject appears in the final declaration between the two presidents, with a clear objective: that Algiers make efforts in the fight against illegal immigration.
And Emmanuel Macron to slip: “Basically, that’s the thought of the relationship. And that’s why everything seizes up every time: when we cooperate less well on the visible part, everyone is a victim“. So starting with the Algerians who want to come to France, work, study, see their families. There, the Head of State wants to be open, but not too much: no question of opening the floodgates, here he is borrowing a vocabulary dear to Nicolas Sarkozy.”We would like to have a much more flexible approach to chosen immigration, that is to say families of dual nationals, but also artists, sportsmen, entrepreneurs, politicians who nourish bilateral relations.“
Words that will speak to the right, also useful in France, when Emmanuel Macron is often accused of having a shaky hand on immigration, a few months from the presentation of a law and a few weeks from a debate in Parliament on the issue.