President of “France-Algeria Association” Calls On Paris To Apologize

While official France deliberately deepens the rift with Algeria through provocative statements and decisions, some moderates outside the ruling elite in Paris are striving to mend what French President Emmanuel Macron and his entourage have damaged. This applies to the former minister and presidential candidate in 2007, Ségolène Royal.

She currently heads the “France-Algeria Association,” which has been led by influential political figures, such as former ministers Jean-Pierre Chevènement, and then Arnaud Montebourg. In her first official meeting since assuming this position about a month ago, she attempted to build bridges with Algeria through statements largely focused on the memory dimension, which is considered one of the issues that has significantly poisoned bilateral relations.

In her first activity as head of the association, on Saturday, January 17, 2026, at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris, under the title: “Tomorrow, France and Algeria,” Ms. Royal expressed her rejection of some descriptions used by French President Emmanuel Macron and his political belt, which consists of right-wing and far-right political figures, such as “memory rent,” which was first employed by the master of the Élysée Palace in 2021 and caused a severe diplomatic crisis, during which Algeria recalled its ambassador from Paris for consultations.

The president of the “Algeria-France Association” presented proposals that she says aim to alleviate the political and diplomatic crisis plaguing Algerian-French relations since the summer of 2024.

However, these proposals only concern memory, and given the developments that have occurred over the past year and a half in bilateral relations, they have become secondary, considering the emergence of more weighty and dangerous issues, such as the Western Sahara issue, which is considered the main cause of the current crisis.

Ms. Ségolène Royal proposes to her country’s authorities, for the sake of de-escalation, the return of properties and belongings that France stole from Algeria during the occupation, and the skulls of Algerian resistance fighters inhumanely displayed in French museums, as well as the looted archives, which Paris procrastinates in returning to their owners under flimsy pretexts, such as that it requires political arrangements that may be difficult to assemble given the discord between the parties in Paris, in addition to handing over maps of the nuclear and chemical explosions carried out by the French occupation army in the Algerian Sahara, and the radioactive waste left by those explosions.

The president of the “France-Algeria Association” pledged to do “everything in her power to make progress on this difficult issue of memory,” aiming to push her country’s authorities to recognize what she described as “fixed and documented historical facts,” referring to the crimes of French colonialism in Algeria, even if she did not name them, and to work, as she said, to isolate those who try to exploit the wound of Algeria’s “loss” from France, in order to legitimize the agendas of the right and far-right.

Ms. Ségolène Royal admitted that “some crimes of French colonialism have not been fully recognized, rectified, or justified, and France must address them,” which helps to create a conducive atmosphere before restoring communication bridges between the two countries, which remains suspended, even after the visit of the Secretary-General of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Anne-Marie Descôtes, to Algeria at the end of last November.

The former French presidential candidate seems very enthusiastic in this regard, and she confirms that she has begun to implement what she is calling for. She said that she has contacted officials at the French “Chantilly” museum to hand over some belongings of the symbol of Algerian resistance, Emir Abdelkader (his tent, sword, and rifle), to the Emir Abdelkader Foundation, whose president was present at Ségolène Royal’s activity, as well as the Baba Merzoug cannon, which will be the subject of discussion “as soon as possible” between her and the mayor of Brest, where it has been erected since it was smuggled from Algeria.

Despite the importance of what the president of the “France-Algeria Association” pointed out, these issues remain a small part of the crisis after it has branched out and taken on more dangerous dimensions, by harming Algeria’s geopolitical interests, Paris’s alliance with the Moroccan regime regarding the Western Sahara issue, and targeting members of the Algerian community in France.

These are the mines that the French authorities have planted on the bridges of communication, and they must be dismantled before any thought of reconciliation with Algeria.