In a context of growing tensions between France and Algeria, the Minister of Justice wishes to “call into question a 2013 agreement”, allowing certain Algerians to “come to France to be able to move freely”.
Sunday January 12, 2025, Gérald Darmanin announced at the microphone of LCI that he wanted to “suppress” the 2013 Franco-Algerian intergovernmental agreement, allowing the Algerian nomenklatura to go to France without a visa. “There is an agreement from 2013, which is a government agreement, which allows those who have an official passport, an Algerian diplomatic passport, there are thousands of them”, to “come to France without a visa to be able to move freely” , declared the Minister of Justice.
“Touching the leaders or most of the Algerian leaders who have the decision-making position of humiliation, as mentioned by the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, seems to me more intelligent, more effective, and it can be done very quickly,” added the Minister of Justice. According to him, it is important to “remove this facility”. A “retaliatory measure” which would not, however, affect “the 10% of our compatriots who have ties of blood, soil, culture, including the Blackfeet,” said Gérald Darmanin.
A deleterious climate between Paris and Algiers
These declarations and this proposal come in a climate of extreme tension between Paris and Algiers. Put on a plane toAlgeria last Thursday, after the publication of a videopublished on the social network TikTok in which he “called for a severe correction to be given to a man appearing to reside in Algeria”, the Algerian influencer “Doualemn” was sent back to France the same evening because he was “banned from territory” in his country original. On Sunday, his detention was extended by 26 days by a judge. A fiasco which had triggered the anger of the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau: “With Algeria, we have reached an extremely worrying threshold. Algeria seeks to humiliate France”, launched the tenant of Beauvau.
“It is a sovereign country that intends to say it and they are right, we must respect them. But they must respect us too. Algeria must respect France, France must respect Algeria (…) We are in a very critical moment and this humiliation that they want to subject us to is not acceptable”, regretted the Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, this Sunday.
The fate reserved for the successful writer Boualem Sansal is also symptomatic of the deterioration of relations between the two countries. The Franco-Algerianis known for his critical stance towards the Algerian regime and Islamism. Several of his books have even been censored in Algeria, but are, for example, published in France. In 2015, he won the Grand Prix du roman from the Académie française for his novel 2084: the end of the worldpublished by Gallimard.
However, he was recently “arrested by the police and imprisoned by the regime” in Algeria. The 75 year old manis accused of “undermining the integrity of the national territory”, which is considered a terrorist act. He therefore risks life imprisonment, or even the death penalty. “He must regain his freedom as quickly as possible, Algeria, I think, would be honored to free him,” the Minister of Justice said this Sunday.