The French Bemoan The Fate Of Their Interests In Algeria

What the Algerians were asking for in terms of dealing with French interests in Algeria, the French are now lamenting and asking their country’s authorities to review their relations with Algeria because the scene of Algerian-French relations has been turned upside down in a way that even the most pessimists did not expect, based on historical relations and the repercussions of the colonial era on Algeria’s internal situation.
The new scene was described by the journalist Nicolas Baveri in a column in the right-wing French newspaper “Le Figaro”, where he wrote: “Contrary to the unilateral declarations by Paris calling for the end of colonialism, a significant deterioration in relations between the two countries is emerging. French companies are systematically discriminated against, and cooperation has accumulated a decline in the multiplicity of disputes regarding non-payment of dues, French language and culture on the way to eradication in Algeria, applications for consular licenses to expel Algerians are systematically rejected”.
This is a sample of what is written in French newspapers associated with the right-wing movement and the extreme right, and what is circulated in Parisian political salons and councils on Algeria. Today, the French are standing on the edge of Algeria’s escape, and they are watching, unable to save what can be saved.
How did this great and exciting change in bilateral relations come about? It is a question that does not require much effort to unravel.
French interests in Algeria have not been as comfortable as they were during the last two decades, due to the pragmatic and often strange tendencies of the regime of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who never dared to say no to any French request, including allowing French air force planes to fly over Algerian airspace in 2013 under the pretext of fighting terrorism in the Republic of Mali and the Sahel region, which was considered a precedent in the history of independent Algeria.
Not only that, but Algeria has been like a “money fund” for French companies over the last two decades, from which they can draw whenever and however they want, under the cover of an exceptional partnership that has secured profitable deals without difficulty, and the case of the “Alstom” and “Suez” companies is the most prominent example of this.
The first company (Alstom) was placed for liquidation on the desk of the former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, when he was finance minister in 2004, but he refused to liquidate it and traveled to Algeria to obtain special deals for it and got what he wanted, the most prominent of which was the electrification of the railway lines of the capital and its suburbs, in addition to other deals that were enough to save it from bankruptcy.
As for the Suez Corporation, which destroyed the economies of Latin American countries and brought its reputation to the lowest level and was blacklisted in many countries of the world, it got the deal of a lifetime in Algeria by managing the water sector in the capital Algiers and in Tipaza, but it did not return the favor, but rather betrayed the trust, more than two years ago, when it left Algerians without drinking water at the height of the Eid al-Adha festival, for reasons that had serious dimensions, which led to the decision to expel it, as in the case of the “RATP” institution that ran the metro in the capital, which caused the disruption of the service of the dead for several months in retaliation for the non-renewal of its contract.
The French, in spite of the privileges they enjoyed in Algeria, despite their sordid colonial past, were not at the level of friendship that was rumored, did not contribute to the transfer of technology, did not invest in sectors that would contribute to the development of the national economy, and were content to set up branches of their institutions operating in the service sector (banking, insurance, auditing…), and in return transferred their profitable activities to some neighboring countries, such as the automobile sector, to name a few.