Paris Unilaterally Dismantles the 1968 Agreement

It has been officially confirmed beyond any doubt that French authorities are exploiting the 1968 migration agreement with Algeria as a tool in their political and diplomatic struggle with their former colony.

They have effectively unilaterally withdrawn from several sensitive clauses of the agreement, while simultaneously demanding that Algeria return to the negotiating table to review it, as if nothing had changed.

The scandal was exposed by a group of five prominent French legal and human rights organisations known for their advocacy for immigrants, including the French association “Lawyers Without Borders” (SAF), Association for the Defence of Foreigners’ Rights (ADDE), the Human Rights League (LDH), the Information and Support Group for Immigrants (GISTI), and the CIMADE, an association for solidarity and political aid for migrants, refugees and displaced.

The aforementioned organisations signed a joint statement entitled “The Franco-Algerian Agreement (1968 Agreement) Under Attack from All Sides: Is the Judicial System Giving Way to Politics?” In it, they condemned “the unprecedented attacks against the Franco-Algerian Agreement, spearheaded in particular by the far right and those nostalgic for French Algeria.”

The source revealed a major scandal: the French side had dropped certain clauses from the 1968 agreement, particularly those concerning residency permits for Algerians, which the agreement had meticulously regulated. The source did not rule out the involvement of the French judiciary in this scandal, suggesting it was serving political agendas.

The five organisations criticised the French Council of State for what they called “stripping the agreement of its essence.” In a statement issued on November 6, 2025, they said: “The first blow was struck in July 2024 with a decision (CE, July 30, 2024, No. 473675) that effectively eliminates the automatic regularization of Algerian nationals based on their presence in France for at least ten years—one of the few protections afforded by this agreement—creating a legal fiction according to which an Algerian person who has been banned from returning to French territory does not reside in France… even though she/he has not left”.

The second blow, according to the same statement, “has just been dealt by the terse but astonishing opinion of October 28, 2025 (by the French Council of State, No. 504980), which distorts the provision of the Franco-Algerian agreement concerning the renewal of the 10-year residence permit”.

Until then, the statement added, “the Council of State had consistently ruled that, based from the provisions of the Franco-Algerian agreement, which provides for the “automatic” renewal of residence permits, no restriction could prevent the renewal of this permit based on the existence of a threat to public order; which could, moreover, be maintained through the application of an expulsion procedure, based on the French Council of State’s decision of February 14, 2001, N° 206914).

Because of these decisions, the statement explained, the relevant administrative authorities in France refuse residency permit renewal applications deposited by Algerians; “it is this position that has just been challenged, the court now considering that these same provisions do not deprive the administrative authority of its power .. to refuse the renewal on grounds relating to the existence of a serious threat to public order. Thus, completely abandoning the term “automatic”, which is nevertheless still present.

The document, issued by legal experts and specialists, further states that “this opinion is expressed within a deteriorating political context characterised by serious erosion of the rights of foreign nationals and an increasing precariousness in their situation.”

The statement concluded that the historic vote on the resolution “denouncing” the 1968 Franco-Algerian agreement by the far-right National Rally party in the French National Assembly (the lower house of parliament) on October 30, 2025, constitutes a particularly alarming sign of the inability of the French institutions to resist racist and xenophobic ideologies.

The dates of the aforementioned French Council of State’s decisions indicate a premeditated intention on the part of the French side to damage bilateral relations. The decision of July 30, 2024, came on the very day the French president announced his support for the Moroccan autonomy plan regarding the Western Sahara issue.

While the second ruling issued by the French Council of State on October 28, 2025 came just two days before the French National Assembly voted on the motion calling for a review of the 1968 agreement, this encouraged members of parliament, including those aligned with Macron, to vote in favor of the motion, thus confirming Macron’s involvement in this scenario in one way or another.

These facts confirm that the French side has effectively begun unilaterally dismantling the 1968 agreement, without waiting to sit down at the negotiating table with the other party to this agreement, namely Algeria. This constitutes a serious breach of the agreement’s provisions and exposes the falsity of France’s repeated demands for a review of the agreement, the most recent of which was made by the new Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, just days ago, following the French Council of State’s decision of October 28, 2025.

Previously, two MPs of Macron’s party had prepared a parliamentary report in which they claimed that the 1968 agreement was costing the French treasury about two billion euros a year, which is part of a systematic French policy to continue emptying this agreement of its content, which requires a strong response from the Algerian side.