Macron Facilitates Access To Archives Of Colonial Period Of Algeria

French President Emmanuel Macron has decided to facilitate access, as from Wednesday, to classified archives more than 50 years old, including those relating to the National Liberation War (1954-1962), said Tuesday in a statement the French presidency.

This decision was taken in order to “allow the archive services to proceed from Wednesday to the declassification of documents covered by the secrecy of national defense up to the files of the year 1970 included,” the same source said, adding that “this decision will be likely to significantly shorten the waiting periods related to the declassification procedure, especially for documents relating to the National Liberation War (Algeria).

According to the same source, the decision came in implementation of recommendations made in the Benjamin Stora report.

The announcement comes a week after President Macron acknowledged, “in the name of France”, that the lawyer and nationalist leader Ali Boumendjel had been “tortured and murdered” by the French colonial army in 1957.

This decision “demonstrates that we are moving very quickly,” the same source noted, noting that its scope goes beyond the framework of Algerian history and that the French president responded favorably to the expectations of the academic community, which complained in particular of “difficulties of access to classified archives more than 50 years old due to the scrupulous application of a circular on the protection of national defense secrecy.

The colonial era archive file was a source of disputes between Algeria and France for decades, and it was always at the center of the meetings of Algerian officials with their French counterparts.

• In July 2020, the President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, appointed his advisor, Abdelmadjid Chikhi, to represent Algeria in negotiations with France over the memory file, after the appointment by French President Emmanuel Macron of historian Benjamin Stora.

• On December 21, 2020, Abdelmadjid Chikhi said: “We did not get a full inspection of what is in the French archives under the pretext that the archive was not classified or arranged and this is not correct, the archive cannot remain in packages for 100 years, as the French side presents conflicting figures regarding its bad faith.”
• The minister said: “According to the information I got from the administration of the National Archives, so far we have recovered only 2 percent of the archives of the colonial period, meaning that there are 98 percent of them still in France”.

• On February 21, the French Senate Representative, Stephen Laurau Dillier, called on the authorities of his country to exchange facilitation of the access of French and Algerian researchers in Algeria and France to the archives related to the colonial past.