the Head of State wants a visit focused on “youth and the future”

Looking to the future. Emmanuel Macron’s three-day visit to Algeria, which begins on Thursday, will be oriented “towards the future, start-ups, innovation, youth, new sectors”. The President of the Republic intends to permanently “rebuild” a relationship damaged by months of memory quarrel between the two countries, assured the Elysée on Tuesday August 23. The Head of State will thus have a “long exchange” Friday with young entrepreneurs in Algiers and will also meet young people in Oran, the country’s second city, on the occasion of a breakdance demonstration.

This visit, President Macron’s second to Algeria since his election in 2017, aims to “laying a foundation for rebuilding, developing” the relationship between Paris and Algiers, insisted the French presidency. The French president intends “continue the work of appeasement of memories”, but it is not “not the primary objective of this visit”, observed the Elysée. The president will go to the Saint-Eugène cemetery in Algiers, where many French people born in Algeria are buried.

This visit comes at the end of a sequence loaded with symbols with the 60th anniversary of the Evian Accords (March 18, 1962), which put an end to more than seven years of war between Algerian insurgents and the French army, and the independence of Algeria, July 5. The relationship between the two countries deteriorated during Emmanuel Macron’s first term. His remarks on the “memorial pension” operated by the “politico-military system” Algerian since 1962, the “hatred of France” and his questions about the existence of an Algerian nation before colonization consummated the break in the fall of 2021. In response, Algiers recalled the Algerian ambassador to Paris for three months.