Tensions ease.
Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune hailed the new "relationship of trust" between France and Algeria and his personal "reciprocal friendship" with Emmanuel Macron, a new sign of the warming of often tumultuous bilateral relations.
In an interview published in Le Figaro on Friday, the Head of State called for a "new era" with France, six months after the visit to Algiers by his French counterpart.
And in turn announced a state visit to France in 2023.
“A certain complicity”
"We have a certain complicity" with the French head of state, said Abdelmajid Tebboune.
“I see in him the embodiment of a new generation that can save relations between our two countries,” he added.
"Certainly we had, he like me, unfortunate formulas, but it is the first time it seems to me that there is such a relationship of trust between our two countries", further estimated the Algerian president.
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Paris and Algiers had found the way to a warming of their relations during a trip by President Macron to Algeria last August.
The two Heads of State had relaunched their cooperation in a joint declaration signed with great fanfare, paving the way in particular for a relaxation of the visa regime granted to Algeria, in exchange for increased cooperation from Algiers in the fight against illegal immigration.
Back to normal for visas
The issue poisoned the bilateral relationship after Paris halved the number of visas granted to Algeria, deemed not quick enough to readmit its nationals expelled from France.
But the file was settled two weeks ago when France announced, through its Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, a return to normal in the granting of visas to Algerian nationals, after those of Tunisia. end of August and from Morocco.
In October, it was French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, accompanied by around fifteen ministers, who went to Algiers to seal this reconciliation around economic projects and a “renewed partnership”.
The memorial question around French colonization (1830-1962) and the bloody war of liberation had caused a serious quarrel between the two countries in the fall of 2021, after remarks by Emmanuel Macron on which he then made amends.
"France must free itself from its colonizer complex and Algeria from its colonized complex", noted in this regard the Algerian head of state, judging his country "victim of tenacious prejudices, which are more a matter of ignorance than malevolence”.