Emmanuel Macron begins an “official and friendly visit” of three days in Algeria

By going to Algiers but also to Oran, the French president shows that he “wants to address the whole country”. In his imposing delegation is the great rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia, a first for such a visit.

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It is not a “state visit”, but an “official visit and friendship”. In Paris, in the case of Franco-Algerian relations, we weigh its words when it comes to describing the displacement that Emmanuel Macron performs in Algeria from August 25 to 27. After a quarrel of several months, the two capitals consider this trip as “a first step”. “The two presidents considered that it was a choice that suited this period. We can hope that a state visit will then come, in both directions,” explains the Elysée.

Franco-Algerian relations had experienced a cold when, in September 2021, Emmanuel Macron had criticized the Algerian “politico-military” system for maintaining an “memory rent” around the war of independence. This time, this official visit aims to be turned towards “youth and the future” in order to “refound” this relationship. Accompanied by an imposing delegation, among which is the Grand Rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia – a first for such a visit -, the president will teach himself with his Algerian counterpart twice before going to Oran, the second city of country, which has its “cultural specificities”, explains the Elysée. “A wish” personal to show that when he goes to Algeria, he does not go only to the capital, but that “he wants to address the whole country”.

In the streets of Algiers, the announcement of the visit of the French delegation arouses much less enthusiasm than the first trip of Emmanuel Macron, five years earlier. In question, the polemical remarks pronounced by the French head of state almost a year ago in the columns of the world about the Algerian political system and especially the existence of an “Algerian nation” before French colonization. Although the French president has expressed since his “regrets”, Algerian public opinion has not completely turned the page.

A few weeks after the celebration with great fanfare of the 60 e anniversary of the country’s accession to independence, some are waiting for a symbolic gesture on the part of President Macron. “For example, the restitution of the archives of the colonial period,” says Mohamed, grandson of Chahid (fighting dead during the Algerian war), who dreams of a appeasement between the two countries like reconciliation Franco-German.

New economic breath

The trip also aims to breathe new life into an economic and commercial partnership which did not hold all the promises displayed during the first visit of Emmanuel Macron as French head of state, in December 2017. “On the eleven agreements signed during the high-level Algerian-French intergovernmental committee, five years ago, only a project was born. It’s distressing,” deplores Lyes Boudiaf, founding president of the investment company Isly Holding.

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