France Once Again Plays On Memory In A Bid To Restore Relations With Algeria

At a time when Algerian-French relations are at “ground zero”, Paris is working hard to dismantle as many obstacles as possible on the path to restoring the lost warmth in bilateral relations, which has been missing for over a year, specifically since the day French President Emmanuel Macron decided to support the Moroccan regime’s thesis on Western Sahara.

Following the advice of Benjamin Stora, the Elysée Palace advisor for memory affairs and a historian, who believes that memory can be a key to the return of relations with Algeria, Macron is trying to play this card, hoping to achieve his desire: to revive this stalled file, which has been suspended for over a year, affected by the breakdown of political communication bridges between the two capitals.

The French government’s decision to enact a framework law aimed at facilitating the return of colonial properties to the countries from which they were plundered signals the possibility of opening a breach in the dark tunnel that bilateral relations have entered, and a response from the very angry Algerian side. Although the draft law is general and comprehensive and not necessarily directed at Algerian properties plundered in French museums and archives, its enactment opens the way for removing a legal obstacle that the French have long used as an excuse to refuse to hand over the skulls of Algerian resistance fighters, as well as the plundered Algerian archives.

According to French media reports, the draft law under consideration is expected to be presented to the French Senate next September. It fulfills an old promise made by President Macron eight years ago, which legalizes the French state’s ability to waive the principle of inalienability of cultural properties and memory-related items, without having to go through and return to the legislative institution, where interests and political positions conflict.

Based on what has been leaked from the chapters of this legal project, what Algeria is demanding can be included within the framework of the promised law, both in terms of the legal period covered (from 1815 to 1972), as the project talks about accelerating the return of cultural properties demanded by “countries that were deprived of them due to illegal seizure” during the aforementioned period.

To be more specific, the project also talks about cultural properties acquired “in case of theft, looting, transfer, or donation obtained by coercion or violence, or from a person who could not dispose of them.” It also emphasizes that instead of a special law for each act or property, it is sufficient for a decision to be issued by the Council of State and documented proof of its illegal seizure, which is the work being undertaken by a bilateral committee comprising French historians and experts and those from the state demanding those properties.

When the pressure from the joint committee tasked with examining the memory file on the Algerian side escalated on the French side, demanding the return of the skulls of Algerian resistance fighters displayed inhumanely in French museums, as well as the Algerian archives, Paris cited legal obstacles preventing the handover of those “French” properties. It stated that this required the issuance of a law by the French Parliament authorizing it, which prevented Algeria from receiving its plundered properties, including the personal properties of Emir Abdelkader.

In fact, the French justification was not convincing to Algerians, as it was considered merely blackmail of the authorities in other files, because the French had previously handed over about twenty skulls of Algerian resistance fighters about four years ago, in the absence of any legislative text mentioning that. However, the enactment of such a law will deprive Paris of any future excuse to refuse to hand over all of Algeria’s properties, which were plundered throughout 132 years of hateful colonial occupation.