European Union Agrees to Review the Partnership With Algeria

The European Union finally accepted Algerian demands and complied with its wishes.

The European Union Ambassador to Algeria, Diego Mellado, announced that Brussels is ready to review the partnership agreement signed between the two parties in 2002 in its initials before it enters into force three years later.

The European side did not accept to review this agreement, except after major changes occurred in its relations with its first partner, the United States of America during the era of Donald Trump, the superpower, and before him Russia, which tightened the noose on it from the eastern side, which made it search for solutions to its problems with other parties, including Algeria.

In a speech by the European Ambassador to Algeria, delivered on Monday at the Marriott Hotel in the capital Algiers, at a forum organized by the European Commission in Algeria in cooperation with the Algerian Agency for Investment Promotion and the Polish Embassy in Algeria, Diego Mellado explained that after twenty years of implementing the partnership agreement, and in the face of new geostrategic realities, it is time to “reconsider our partnership and review our relations as a whole, especially within the framework of the new Mediterranean Charter.”

The European Union has entered an unprecedented crisis since World War II, as it has lost its traditional ally, the United States of America, whose President Donald Trump decided to impose customs duties on European goods. It is also witnessing a military crisis on its eastern border with Russia, which has nibbled away at large parts of Ukraine. At the same time, the Europeans are being excluded from any participation in managing the Ukrainian crisis, amid talk of a summit between Trump and Putin that will end the crisis at the expense of the Europeans. Perhaps this is what the Europeans referred to as “geostrategic facts”.

The European official spoke about the “fundamental and strategic” nature of relations between Algeria and the European Union, stressing that the year 2025 will be a good opportunity to deepen and strengthen them, based on a “win-win” partnership, a phrase that Europeans have been repeating for nearly two decades, but it was entirely different, given the huge losses incurred by the Algerian side from this partnership, which was a “win-lose”, as the best description of it.

In familiar language, Diego Mellado said that “it is possible to attract more European investments in Algeria, develop and facilitate our trade and integrate our economies”, and he acknowledged the legitimacy of Algeria’s approach to diversifying its economy, which in this context is in line with the objectives of the European Union aimed at strengthening its industrial base.

Previously in January, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune called for reviewing the partnership agreement with the European Union and justified this urgent demand by what is “imposed by realistic economic data”, marked by the transformations witnessed by Algeria, which no longer exports only hydrocarbons, after it succeeded in diversifying and expanding its exports outside hydrocarbons, especially in the field of agricultural production, minerals, cement, food products, and other goods.

Before that, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the National Community Abroad had confirmed that the goal is to restore the balance of interests between the two parties, especially for Algeria, which seeks to protect its local production, after reviving several sectors such as industry and agriculture, noting that the Algerian side had been losing in this agreement for two decades, which gives it the right to call for its review.

The Algerian authorities no longer trusted the Europeans’ promises to increase investments in Algeria, given the previous promises that turned out to be false. Based on the figures previously revealed by Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf, European investments in Algeria did not exceed 13 billion dollars only in two decades, 12 billion dollars of which were transferred to Europe in the form of profits, while the volume of trade exchange was around a thousand billion dollars, a fact that belies the Europeans’ claims.