A secret visit, before the official conversation of March 31 between the two presidents: the diplomatic advisor of the Elysée Emmanuel Bonne is in Algiers on March 26. During the crisis, exchanges continue. And it is a man at the heart of these conciliabules who confides it: “President Tebboune follows French politics very closely, he masters it better than some in Paris. He is not fooled.” If the Algerian file is explosive, it is also for that, because it mixes like no other diplomacy, economy, immigration, security, memory issues and political considerations.
Abdelmadjid Tebboune little names. The Algerian head of state is too happy to reduce Bruno Retailleau to the rank of mediocre actor of the French “political shackle”. The Minister of the Interior accommodates this indifference without difficulty. He proudly exhibits that the local press has devoted him since the start of his showdown with the Algerian regime, guilty of refusing on his soil so many nationals targeted by an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF). The Vendéen is leading this open -air fight, with public opinion for witness. It would be regrettable for LR activists, called upon to designate their new leader in May, do not observe this exhibition of muscles. “Retailleau takes possession of a capital space thanks to a file that speaks to the strongest right without being an extremist subject,” notes former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
The assigned roles of Beauvau and the Quai d’Orsay
François Bayrou measures the influence of the internal voting of the right in this diplomatic battle. “The LR Congress is the frame of reference” in which the management of the Algerian file is written by Bruno Retailleau, it is said in Matignon. The head of government cannot complain. He wanted strong ministers. He cannot therefore oppose a member of his government contributes to the presidency of a movement. But it has political repercussions. They were felt on February 25. On the eve of the interdepartmental committee on immigration, Bruno Retailleau blows an idea to the head of government. What if Algeria was added to the agenda? Sold. The attack perpetrated three days earlier by an Algerian hiding in Mulhouse transformed the request into evidence. Bruno Retailleau hammers his strategy. He stages his confrontation with the regime, of his promise of a “graduated response” to his call to a denunciation of the 1968 agreements. Who remembers that Edouard Philippe was the first to demand their abolition? The mayor of Le Havre, perhaps … a relative of the owner of the horizons admits that the French attribute to the Vendéen the fatherhood of this popular idea.
The suspicion of instrumentalization lurks. Beauvau brandishes her pragmatism as a good faith. Has the outstretched hand policy work? Has “repentance” softening Algerian power? Its intelligence services have cooperated less with France than Russia during the last Olympic Games. Bruno Retailleau was only a simple senator. No, the effectiveness requirement would control firmness. Certainly, these retired diplomats are more political than their successors.
In all subjectivity, the roles are assigned. In Beauvau, light saber politics. At the Quai d’Orsay, diplomacy at dad. Tinged with the arrogance of the saphants, obsessed with a obsolete decorum. “A vaporous NGO”, sometimes annoys Bruno Retailleau. These diplomats know the world by heart. It is their strength. They have developed so many emotional ties there. There would be their weakness. Louis-Xavier Thirode worked at the Algiers Embassy before becoming Director of Deputy Cabinet of Bruno Retailleau. This leaves traces: “When I came back from Algeria, I had only one desire: it is to go back”, it was heard already said in the cabinet. A faithful of the head of state is annoyed by this schematic opposition: “There was an attempt by Beauvau to have the hat of credulity to the quay. But one could retort that Beauvau has a naive approach, turned more towards domestic politics than towards pragmatism and the will to obtain results.”
Removing alert. The Retailleau offensive has aroused some terror in the government. “The Algerian file is totally taken hostage, regrets a minister. This weakens the government of France to stage the divisions between the Quai d’Orsay and Beauvau and that waste time against Algeria when it is necessary to adapt to the double permanent discourse of its government.”
The Boulem Sansal case illustrates the range of strategies: while the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, claims its discretion after having published a press release on the fate of the writer-“you have to be in negotiations rather than adding it, when you are minister, you are in an entity that negotiates with another entity”, observes rue de Valois-, its interior counterpart multiplies the statements until the subject His electoral meetings for the conquest of the Presidency of LR.
Alert, opposite winds. The Retailleau gust certainly left the shocking diplomatic cell at the Elysée but it takes much more to Emmanuel Macron to vacillate. “The 1968 agreement is the president”, the double game too is the president. When the Minister of the Interior joined him on Wednesday, March 5, for an update on the Algerian file, he read like everyone else the recent declarations of the Head of State. “Franco-Algerian relations should not be the subject of political games,” warned the latter in particular. So when their tête-à-tête begins, Bruno Retailleau ventures: “Mr. President, is there a divergence between us?” The tenant of Beauvau has antennas and his whistling ears, he knows that around Emmanuel Macron, the official specialists of the Algeria subject sink: “The more the Minister of the Interior is expressed, the less the Algerians cooperate.” But this president is free and, sometimes, fine strategist. No doubt he perceived the advantage that he could draw from a healthy distribution of roles: in Retailleau the firmness displayed which satisfies the opinion in France, his, president, the reserved area of the behind the scenes which, if they led, would allow him to congratulate himself from a hard-acquired victory. There is therefore no question of typing the minister. “We agree on the objective, we must expel the OQTF,” replied Emmanuel Macron according to the story he himself made to his advisers. Before adding: “This objective must be worth for all countries.”
It has been a long time since the migratory question overlooks the subject. In 2019, the Elysée had ordered a “confidential defense” note: what would happen if a wave of arrivals swept over the French coast during an Algerian spring? They could be 1 million … “The day the army gets angry in Algiers and kills 20 people, we will have to be prepared for the influx,” said an actor of the time. Beauvau had therefore asked the prefects to prepare for several scenarios. The case of the port of Marseille is particularly studied, because it was intended to be the first destination of the boats which would be taken over.
We are not modest when we are president. Emmanuel Macron believed that by announcing “honestly”, according to the confident word of a diplomat, to President Tebboune on the sidelines of the Italian G7 in June 2024 that he was preparing to recognize the Moroccanity of Western Sahara, he could pursue his objective of reconciliation of Franco-Algerian memories? Does he think, even today, to be able to refound the relationship between France and Algeria by obtaining the liberation of Boualem Sansal, by negotiating better compulsory figures, by appearing the spirits of the Algerian diaspora? If this is the case, it will not be with the vindictive Bruno Retailleau: it is Jean-Noël Barrot then the Keeper of the Seals Gérald Darmanin which he sends on the spot, according to the conciliatory press release published on March 31.
Emmanuel Macron’s intimate conviction
2017, a few weeks after his trip to Algeria and his remarks on colonization “crime against humanity”, Emmanuel Macron receives a phone call. Gérard Collomb is bruised by the words of his young friend. An error, he thinks. He sermns: “You are not of this generation, you cannot measure emotional ins and outs …” The answer springs, triumphant: “It is precisely because I am not that generation that I can do it.” We are not more modest when we are aspiring president.
Always, and even since before, Emmanuel Macron, like any president of the VE, nourishes with Algeria a fantasy. “He dreams of finding the balance,” they say soberly around him. Succeed where its predecessors failed, a classic Macronism engine. For that, there is no shortage of imagination. Before slamming the “memorial rent” to the ears of Algerian power in 2021, he envisaged another method: showing consideration by naming ambassador to Algeria “the best of himself” – according to one of his confidants – and incidentally former Minister of the Interior: Christophe Castaner.
A time, around him, the most reckless or the most carefree have had a dream: that a gesture, an image symbolizes before the end of his five -year reconciliation that skeptics consider impossible. As he directs the Elysian communication, Joseph Zimet addresses a photo to the president. On the black and white shot, we observe the German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling in Warsaw, on December 7, 1970, in front of the monument which commemorates the uprising of the ghetto where hundreds of thousands of Jews knew death, killed or deported. Zimet does not stop there. He matches his sending of a message: a similar gesture of Emmanuel Macron would make him enter history as the man of reconciliation with Algeria. The little story, on the other hand, does not say what the recipient responded to his communicator. But one of his advisers laughs: “Do you imagine the president on his knees?”
And it is precisely, he believes, to spare any form of genuflection that the head of state spares the current Algerian leader. His predecessor, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was tough, rigid, heavy with his past. Emmanuel Macron experienced it in December 2017 during his first presidential trip to Algeria. He slides in the ear of the elderly and sick state a word on the harkis: “Mr. President, wouldn’t it be time to forgive?” “These traitors? Never.”
There is in Emmanuel Macron the intimate conviction that with another than Abdelmadjid Tebboune, everything would be worse. Of course, he would like progress, but he rejoiced in front of several interlocutors of his conversations full of hope with Tebboune. And the latter is not far from developing the same reasoning. According to one of his recent visitors, the president would anticipate the victory in 2027 of an anti-Algerian “candidate. All these little people have a few reasons to get along.
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