Insistence on Depriving Algerians of Their Rights, Privileges in France
The former French ambassador to Algeria from 2008 to 2012 and from 2017 to 2020, Xavier Driencourt, returns once again to attack Algeria, wearing a right-wing hat as usual, and calling upon his country’s authorities to review the “1968 agreement” signed between Algeria and France “unilaterally”, which gives exceptional privileges to Algerians compared with their neighbours in the Maghreb in the field of immigration.
Driencourt, who worked in Algeria as ambassador to France from 2008 to 2012 and from 2017 to 2020, is trying to ride the wave of revision of the immigration law that is subject to political bidding between President Emmanuel Macron and the right-wing represented by LR “Republicans” party led by the far-right positioned, Eric Ciotti, who is trying to pour more fire on the political debate to serve his agenda aimed at stripping Algerians of any privileges in France.
On the columns of a French newspaper, “Le Figaro”, the retired diplomat’s calls were repeated, driven by a grudge he held for the Algerians against the backdrop of what he lived through during the days of the popular movement “Hirak” in 2019 when he felt that his presence was unwanted in Algeria.
Despite his certainty of the dangerous repercussions of his call for revising the 1968 agreement on the fragile bilateral relations, he did not hesitate to demand that to confirm that the goal of his recent repeated outings, which were generally through media serving the right wing, which has lost its “traditional right-wing trend” and became right-wing with the right-wing specifications of Marine Le Pen and her father, and the distorted version of their project, represented by the founder of the “Reconquest!” party, Eric Zemmour.
For the retired diplomat, the unilateral suspension of the 1968 Treaty by the French authorities would prompt the Algerian authorities to take an extreme reaction, such as severing diplomatic relations between the two countries, yet he insists on calling upon the French authorities to have the courage to do this and take the bad decision to establish a balance of power that allows the rebuilding of bilateral relations according to a new logic in which immigration is an important component of this review,” he said, claiming: “You have to be clear: there is no peaceful way to achieve this goal.”
In the interview, the words emanating from the former French ambassador to Algeria suggested that the man was stricken with unbearable internal pain, as he saw the Algerian nationals enjoying privileges lacking by their counterparts from the Alauite kingdom, or in Tunisia, even though all the Maghreb countries, except Libya, were French colonies, which explains that this diplomat, whose duties were terminated from Algeria, suffers from a disease called “Algerophobia”, which the French experts have been unable to treat.
Therefore, the speaker does not see the existence of any credibility for revising the immigration law under study, unless the 1968 agreement, which gives Algerian nationals exceptional privileges, in terms of movement and residence related to study, work and the exercise of commercial activity on French soil is reviewed.
It is not the first time that this diplomat has come out to attack Algeria in a way that has a lot of chauvinism and aggression, especially through the newspaper “Le Figaro” and other French media affiliated with the right wing, similar to the magazine “Le Point”, through which he singled out a significant part of his memoirs for Algeria, which came under the title “The Algerian Enigma”, which included prejudices that smelled of racism, much like what comes from the circles that have not yet got rid of the complex of France’s defeat in Algeria, militarily, politically and morally.
