Le Pen accuses Macron of bowing to Algeria and calls for a halt to visas

Rarely does any leader of the far-right in France delve into their country’s domestic politics without Algeria being present in their discourse, especially when it comes to the primary figure of this movement, Marine Le Pen, who was born and raised in a household shaped by a discourse charged with hostility towards Algeria, due to inherited considerations from the past of this movement that shed Algerian blood even after the ceasefire was declared.

The leader of the “National Rally” party, the legitimate heir to the far-right “National Front” party, Marine Le Pen, in a speech in Bordeaux, southwestern France, where its summer university convened, dragged Algeria into France’s internal political conflicts, while she was settling her political scores with French President Emmanuel Macron, whom she accused of failing to manage the affairs of the French state.

Le Pen accused the French President of “bowing” before Algeria in the unprecedented crisis afflicting bilateral relations. The head of her party’s parliamentary group in the French National Assembly (the lower house of parliament) also claimed that Algeria “mistreats” the master of the Élysée Palace and “insults him daily,” as she described it.

The former candidate for the French presidential elections did not reveal the nature of the “daily insults” her country’s president is subjected to by Algeria, as she claimed. However, through her continued speech, it became clear that she was referring to Macron’s inability to subdue the Algerian authorities and force them to release the Franco-Algerian writer, Boualem Sansal, and the sports journalist, Christophe Glez, who are serving sentences of five and seven years in prison, respectively, in cases related to harming Algeria’s territorial integrity for the former, and involvement in praising terrorism for the latter.

Le Pen said, addressing a crowd of her extremist party’s activists and cadres, on Sunday, September 14: “Allow me, dear friends, to send a message of support to our writer Boualem Sansal, imprisoned in Algeria, and of course also to the sports journalist Christophe Glez. We are thinking of them and will continue to demand their release.”

Despite the French Development Agency confirming that Algeria has not received financial aid for development from France, far-right figures, led by Marine Le Pen, insist every time on this falsehood, which led Algeria to file a lawsuit against its inventor, the French MEP, Sarah Knafo, who was elected within the ranks of the most extremist microscopic right-wing party “Reconquête,” founded by Éric Zemmour.

Rémy Rioux, the Director-General of the French Development Agency, officially denied the issue of “alleged” French aid to the Algerian state last July, and confirmed at the time: “We have no activities in Algeria. We do not provide funding. What is announced as aid only concerns scholarships provided to Algerian students in France, and it is not the responsibility of the French Development Agency… Algeria does not borrow money from us.”

In order to counter the Algerian position that rejects any compromise, Marine Le Pen calls on the French President to adopt a “very simple idea” in defending France’s interests and its citizens, which is to activate what she called the “zero triple” in dealing with countries that refuse to receive their nationals. She referred here to preventing the provision of any public aid, stopping financial transfers from France, and above all, stopping the issuance of visas.

Ministers in the fallen government of François Bayrou, led by the Minister of Interior, Bruno Retailleau, had previously accused Algeria of not receiving its nationals against whom expulsion orders from French territory had been issued. However, those accusations proved false, because the French Ministry of Interior’s departments were involved in deporting Algerians outside the laws and consular norms governed by bilateral agreements, and framed by the 1961 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.