Memorial issue, war in Ukraine and Algerian gas, visas, security in the Sahel … and getting out of the quarrels of the first five-year term: Emmanuel Macron’s upcoming visit to Algeria this Thursday is fraught with challenges.
Memory question
Emmanuel Macron, the first French president born after the Algerian war (1954-1962), has never ceased, since his election in 2017, to try to normalize relations between the two peoples. Still a candidate, he had struck the spirits by qualifying the colonization of “crime against humanity”, and has since multiplied memorial gestures. But Algeria has not embarked on this work of memory and has deplored that the French president does not express “repentance” for the 132 years of French colonization. After months of tension, Emmanuel Macron 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.
“Since the first visit, in 1975, of a tenant of the Élysée, in this case the late Giscard d’Estaing, there has never been a long period of stability in these agitated relations. Macron will not escape the rule: he will try to pick up the pieces, like the others. Difficult task this time after his remarks not at all friendly and even frankly hostile to our country”, judge Le Soir d’Algerie. This question also weighs heavily in domestic politics on both sides of the Mediterranean. Seven million French people are linked in one way or another to Algeria.
Gas, Algeria’s major asset
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Algeria, one of the world’s top ten gas producers, has become a highly coveted interlocutor for Europeans anxious to reduce their dependence on Russian gas. “The French president will certainly ask Algeria to make an effort to try to increase its gas production”, anticipates the Algerian economist Abderahmane Mebtoul to AFP. According to him, “if the French want more, they have to invest” in the gas industry and renewable energies in Algeria. Algeria has become Italy’s leading gas supplier in recent months, via the Transmed gas pipeline which passes through Tunisia. “While Algeria has strongly reinforced its supply to Italy, France seems to want to check that it too can count on Algeria if it has to be deprived of Russian gas”, TSA note.
Relaunch economic exchanges
France is struggling economically in Algeria where, with around 10% market share, it is now supplanted by China (16%), the country’s leading supplier. Suez lost the water management of Algiers, the RATP that of the metro and Aéroports de Paris that of the airport of the capital. The factory of the Renault automobile group is also hampered by state quotas of imported parts. “There are many possibilities but France has to change software. France has lost a lot in Africa”, notes the economist Abderahmane Mebtoul.
The visa file
Paris has reduced by 50% the number of visas granted to Algeria, as in Morocco, to put pressure on governments deemed too 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 to AFP Xavier Driencourt, former ambassador of France in Algeria.
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”. The two parties would have reached agreements on this visa file. “Things are going much better, including on the issue of readmissions. We must continue and amplify this positive dynamic”, says Maghreb emergent, citing a diplomatic source.
Morocco and Western Sahara
President Macron’s visit risks causing tension, if not criticism in Morocco, Algeria’s great regional rival and whose relations with Paris have cooled. “There is always a competition between Algeria and Morocco.[Avec cette visite]Algeria wants to score points”, believes Xavier Driencourt. Conversely, Rabat expects France to demonstrate more “clearly” its support for the Moroccan autonomy plan to settle the Western Sahara conflict. Algeria, which supports the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, for its part severed diplomatic relations with Morocco in August 2021.
Regional issues
“President Macron knows that without the collaboration of Algiers, it is very difficult to register the slightest breakthrough in the files of the Sahel and Libya”, 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. Algeria, which shares some 1,400 km of borders with its southern neighbor, took an active part in the peace agreement signed in 2015 with the independence rebellion to end the war in Mali, although its application remains uncertain.
Human rights
NGOs denounce the regime’s turn of the screw, which stifled the popular protest movement of Hirak at the origin of the fall of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019. A dozen organizations in the Algerian diaspora have urged Emmanuel Macron to “do not conceal” the subject of rights and freedoms during his visit. 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).
As a counter-fire, Algerian associations, close to power, call “the President of the French Republic to put an end to intrusive associations, activating under the guise of democracy, the defense of human rights and freedom of expression, taking advantage of their presence in France to spread hate speech , violence, and incitement to terrorism among Algerians and state institutions (…)”.
Will the two countries be able to overcome their differences? For the daily L’Expression, “2022 is politically special. Emmanuel Macron is starting his 2nd and last term. He has the political means to take a winning bet on the future”.