New episode of tensions between Paris and Algiers. The Algerian authorities announced on Monday, May 12, a new expulsion from French officials on Monday, May 12, according to the France-Presse (AFP) agency. “The departure of the agents in the temporary mission is unjustified and unjustifiable,” said Foreign Minister in the vigil, Jean-Noël Barot, who announces an “immediate, firm and proportionate response to the attack on our interests.”
Algeria mentioned 15 public officials “who had to assume diplomatic or consular functions without these tasks having done the object, or official notifications or appropriate accreditation requests as required by the procedures in force.”
In mid -April, twelve French officials had been brutally expelled by Algiers and Paris had taken a similar reprisal measure. “The relationship remains blocked and completely frozen,” said the head of French diplomacy. This situation is “the fault of the Algerian authorities who brutally decided to expel twelve of our agents,” he accused the head of French diplomacy.
France does not “refrain” from taking sanctions
“It is not just a brutal administrative decision, it was men and women who had to leave their families, their children, their homes,” he added. Remember in France at the request of Emmanuel Macron, the French ambassador to Algiers Stéphane Romatet is still in Paris “for consultations” and no return date has been mentioned in Algeria for the moment.
When asked about the possible sanctions against Algiers, Jean-Noël Barrot recalled that he had taken measures at the beginning of the year “to restrict access to the circulation of dignitaries” in France, which had been “strongly felt by interested persons.”
“It does not prohibit me from taking it (news, note). I will not necessarily say when I take them, when I will not take them. This is how diplomacy works,” he concluded.
Long degradation of the Franco-Algeria relationship
The Franco-Algeria relationship, never really peaceful, deteriorated in July 2024, when Algiers remembered his ambassador after Emmanuel Macron’s support in the Moroccan autonomy plan in Western Sahara. In November, the new climbing with the arrest of the writer Franco-Algerio Boalem Sansal in Algiers. Between December and January, several influential Algerian people installed in France are arrested and accused of having put online hateful content and demanding violence.
Despite a brief warming of relations in March, after a telephone interview between Emmanuel Macron and the ABDELMADJID Tebboune counterpart, relations deteriorate again in April when three men, including one who work in a consulate in Algeria in France, are arrested and accused in Paris.
Source: BFM TV
