After a long mute silence that was beginning to become politically heavy, the French authorities reacted to the Algerian regime’s intrusion into the urban riots that France has experienced in recent weeks. It was through the voice of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, and in an interview with a German media.
And it was not even in a direct and nominative way. This was in response to a global question from the countries that have targeted France with their reproaches following these dramatic events. The question was phrased as follows: “Madam Minister, Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Algeria have publicly criticized France for the unrest. Has France’s international reputation suffered? “.
And Catherine Colonna’s response was intended to be sarcastic: “Some countries with disastrous human rights records have seen fit to lecture us, it would be laughable if their populations were not suffering so much”.
The Algerian media jumped on this media release to present it as Paris’ response to the press release from the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which he said he was “shocked and appalled” and to follow the situation in France “with great attention”.
Except that France does not have the same relationship and the same issues with Algeria as with Azerbaijan or Iran to include them in the same response and not to reserve for the Algerian regime an adequate response commensurate with the close ties between the two countries.
It must be said that official France is experiencing a moment of embarrassment and embarrassment with regard to the recent behavior of the Algerian regime. She felt constrained in her expression in front of at least three facts which are as many provocations of the Algerian regime with regard to Paris.
The first is the reintroduction of a couplet openly hostile to France within the Algerian national anthem. The second is the visit of Abdelmajid Tebboune to Russia and the thinly veiled harsh criticism addressed to France, for the colonial past, its activism in the Sahel and the Algerian positioning alongside the Russians at the antipodes of European and American interests in the Russian war. in Ukraine.
So many hostile behaviors that would have required a French reaction, or even a readjustment of French policy with regard to Algeria. But in view of the still effervescent relations between Algiers and Paris, French diplomacy has chosen not to throw oil on the fire and to react in such an epidermal and sanguine manner as the Algerian regime regularly does.
Especially since a new deal has emerged in the French political debate in recent months, concerning the need to review the 1968 agreement which specifically organizes the migratory relationship between France and Algeria. This agreement gives preference and structural advantages to Algerian candidates for immigration. This proposal was publicized by the former ambassador to Algeria, Xavier Driencourt, and adopted by many political forces in France, in particular the republican right and the extreme right.
The promoters of this cancellation believe that if France wants to fight effectively against immigration, it has no choice but to review the 1968 agreement. An agreement which appears to the Algerian regime as a red line to do not exceed under penalty of causing unexpected reactions.
While waiting for the French authorities to take an official position on the very political debate surrounding this agreement, French diplomacy cannot sit idly by in the face of the political choices of the Algerian regime.
What is openly questioned here is President Emmanuel Macron’s Algerian bet. The new readjustments of French policy in the Maghreb will certainly come the day when French diplomacy acknowledges the failure of this bet.
But today, there is clearly resistance, even a refusal to recognize and officially admit that this French bet on the Algerian regime and whose bill was the dangerous deterioration of relations between France and Morocco, is definitively lost. .
Today, only French opposition figures are sounding the alarm about the dangerousness and confusion of relations between Paris and the Maghreb countries. Emmanuel Macron has not mentioned the Algerian problem or the crisis with Morocco for a long time. As if no sense of urgency was needed at the Elysée to clarify the issues of this very special relationship with the Maghreb countries.
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