The Algerian president wants to leave no room for doubt. A few days after his counterpart Emmanuel Macron, Abdelmadjid Tebboune affirmed, in an interview broadcast on Monday July 27, that he had “never” requested a visa quota from France, in response to a lively controversy triggered by comments from the French ambassador on this subject.
“I reaffirm it for the Algerians before our French friends: the Algerian president has never asked for a quota of visas, a number of visas or talked about visas,” Abdelmadjid Tebboune told journalists, according to an extract published by the Algerian presidency.
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The Algerian president spoke a few days after his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron who declared that France had not set any “quantified objective” concerning the number of visas granted to Algeria and was showing “no laxity”.
The French president thus wanted to “correct” the comments of the French ambassador to Algeria, Stéphane Romatet, having sparked a lively controversy in France.
“Algeria will never win”
In a filmed interview broadcast by the media Tout sur l’Algérie (TSA), Stéphane Romatet spoke of an “increase” in the number of visas issued to Algerians to “probably return” to the pre-crisis level between the two countries, i.e. 250,000 per year, sparking an outcry from the right and the far right in France.
The president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, denounced a “capitulation” and the Republican (LR) presidential candidate, Bruno Retailleau, a “renunciation”, while Paris is trying to renew more peaceful relations with Algiers after a succession of crises.
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A deep crisis broke out in the summer of 2024 between France and Algeria when Paris supported an autonomy plan under “Moroccan sovereignty” for the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Algeria, which supports the separatists of the Polisario Front, immediately recalled its ambassador to France.
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“I have never asked for apologies, I have never asked for compensation, Algeria will never beg,” added President Tebboune in the interview. Algeria is demanding “recognition (by France) of crimes committed in the country”, not “financial compensation”, the Algerian president has already declared in the past.
Last March, the Algerian Parliament approved a law criminalizing French colonization, in which no longer appear the demands for official apologies or generalized reparations, contained in a first version. The text places on the French state “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it has generated”.
With AFP
