Franco-Algerian 1968 Agreement: A French MP Recommends Calm Negotiations

A French MP’s report recommended that the French authorities should go for a “calm review” of the 1968 agreement on migration signed with Algeria.

It is the first report completed by an MP and official in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly (the lower chamber of Parliament), and placed on the discussion table in the French Parliament.

The 70 page report was prepared by MP Frédéric Petit, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly, who visited Algeria between September 17 and 21, in his capacity as rapporteur, met with diplomats, members of civil society and entrepreneurs from both France and Algeria.

The report aims to search for solutions and provide recommendations to improve the faltering Algerian-French relations.

The report was presented to members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly, according to what was stated in the magazine “Jeune Afrique”, in which MP Frédéric Petit admits that, despite the ramifications of Algerian-French relations in their humanitarian dimension, they remain “completely dysfunctional” at the political level,” despite the many efforts made by the French President, Emmanuel Macron.

The French MP recalled the history of Algerian-French relations during the last two decades, and stopped at the efforts undertaken by Presidents Jacques Chirac and Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who were on the verge of signing a friendship treaty and establishing an exceptional partnership in March 2003, but this project fell into the water in the summer of 2008, when the first major crisis broke out between the two countries, following the arrest of an Algerian diplomat, he said, ignoring the real reason for canceling the friendship treaty, which was the French Parliament’s ratification of the law of February 23, 2005, which glorified French colonial practices.

Frédéric Petit explained in his report that the two countries failed to restore bilateral relations and return to signing the friendship treaty, even during the era of French President François Hollande (2012-2017), whose presidency was considered the calmest in relations between Algeria and Paris, and replaced that treaty by adopting the term “exceptional partnership.” Emmanuel Macron proposed to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune “a declaration from Algiers to renew the partnership,” during his visit in 2022, yet bilateral relations did not live up to the predicted level.

The report expressed astonishment at the existence of three agreements between Algeria and Paris during the last two decades, but this did not contribute to overcoming the difficulties facing bilateral relations. However, what is interesting in it is the focus on the Algerian side in the crises in bilateral relations, despite the fact that the French party is considered primarily responsible for the bad level to which relations between Algeria and Paris have reached, due to the fabricated crises in which it has been involved during the last few years.

The rapporteur considered it “the desire of the Algerian authorities to prefer the Arabic and English languages at the expense of French,” and tried to consider this a problem, a characterization considered to be lacking credibility, because Algeria is sovereign in taking its decisions and has the right to teach the language it deems appropriate for its society, in addition to the fact that the English language is considered A global language, and then turning it into a second language in Algeria or in other countries of the world is considered a good and strategic option.

The decision of the Algerian authorities to prevent the teaching of the French educational program in private schools, starting from the current academic year, was among the points at which the report stopped, which spoke of the desire of the French authorities to establish new schools on Algerian soil, teaching the French program, but it ignored hundreds of thousands of the Algerian immigrants who study the French educational program and are deprived of learning their mother tongue.