France’s interior minister returns to his old habit of attacking Algeria

After an undeclared truce of more than a week, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has returned to his favorite habit of attacking Algeria, as usual raising the flag of escalation. Retailleau admitted that the iron-fisted policy of dealing with Algeria, which he imposed on his President Emmanuel Macron, has not achieved what he had hoped for.

If the French Interior Minister showed a human touch at the beginning of his twenty-minute interview with BFMTV and RMC on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, by talking about the psychological state caused by the Algerian authorities’ decision to expel 12 French employees of the Paris Embassy in Algiers, to the expelled consular agents, more than a week ago, and declaring his sympathy with them, he soon moved to defend his escalationist option against Algeria.

In his interview, Bruno Retailleau returned to the meeting he had last Tuesday with the French consuls affiliated to his interests in the Interior portfolio, in response to the imprisonment of an Algerian consular officer outside diplomatic norms in the French capital, Paris, speaking about their exposure to difficult psychological conditions after the expulsion decision, saying: “They were very shocked.”

The French interior minister spoke about the content of the meeting: “I spoke to them (the expelled consuls) in private, and they were all very traumatized. I noticed that some of them have left their families, they have young children in school, others are married. So it’s not just the professional aspect, it’s also the emotional and family aspect.”

It appeared that the media interview of the French official, who is obsessed with targeting Algeria, was arranged with BFMTV and RMC for two main purposes: first, to remind the French that the crisis with Algeria did not end with the mutual expulsion of consular staff, and second, to return to the media front to boost his chances in the May 17 race against his rival Laurent Fouquier, especially since his temporary silence on Algeria lost him points in favor of his rival Laurent Fouquier.

Asked about relations with Algeria, Retailleau replied: “There has been no progress.” This is a complete failure of the iron fist policy pursued by Paris, as stated by more than one French official, including Henri Guéhenno, advisor to former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who ruled out any achievement by the French side in the conflict with Algeria, as the latter’s cards are more effective.

The right-wing minister listed a number of French failures in the face of Algeria: “Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal was not released. “Every day, or almost every day, Algeria sends us individuals, nor has it received people who have been ordered to leave French territory in accordance with the obligations imposed by the 1994 agreement.

“At the moment, this is the situation we are in, and if the situation remains the same, I can’t imagine that we won’t be able to take new measures. We had to establish a balance of power.”

“Diplomacy has played its role,” according to the candidate for the presidency of the right-wing Republican Party, but ”things have not moved, and we must not leave it there.”

Amid his call for “new measures” against Algeria, Retailleau talked about revisiting the 2013 agreement that exempts holders of Algerian and French diplomatic passports from visa requirements, a measure that “could be the next step,” as he put it, as well as other measures that he did not mention.

The French minister’s words indicate the signs of a new French political and media escalation, because the recent period of calm proved that the Algerian side is the beneficiary, while France cannot continue without benefiting from the spoils it has lost in Algeria, which has turned to new partners according to a win-win logic.