Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly, Frédéric Petit met diplomats and cooperation actors in France and Algeria. Points of tension, ways out… What does his report contain?
Member of Parliament for the 7th constituency of French people established abroad (which includes Germany, Central Europe, and the Balkans), member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly, vice-president of the Affairs Committee European countries, Frédéric Petit stayed in Algeria – in Algiers and Oran – from September 17 to 21, as part of his duties as budget rapporteur for cultural diplomacy and French influence.
“Courageous initiatives”
During this trip, he met French diplomats as well as members of Algerian civil society. These exchanges, which are added to his discussions with diplomats from the Quai d’Orsay as well as with executives from different ministries and cooperation agencies, feed the report on Algerian-French relations that he has just presented to the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly. Around sixty pages, in which he dissects these relationships and shows, with supporting examples, what the blocking points are.
From the outset, an observation: relations between France and Algeria appear “just as abundant on a human level as they are dysfunctional on a political level”. Despite the “courageous initiatives” of Emmanuel Macron, judge Frédéric Petit, it is “difficult not to note the permanence of the blockages in the State-to-State relationship”. And these stumbling blocks are not new, as if appeasement was wishful thinking
In March 2003, recalls the MP, presidents Jacques Chirac and Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced the signing of a friendship treaty and the establishment of an exceptional partnership. But the treaty ended in the summer of 2008, when a first major crisis opposed the two countries, following the arrest of an Algerian diplomat supposedly involved in the assassination, in 1987, of the French Algerian Ali Mecili. In December 2012, François Hollande and the same Bouteflika signed the Algiers Declaration on friendship and cooperation. It will last a long time. New president, new attempt: on a trip to Algeria in August 2022, Emmanuel Macron proposed to Abdelmadjid Tebboune “a declaration from Algiers for a renewed partnership”.
Three treaties in twenty years
In the space of two decades, French and Algerian presidents have therefore signed three declarations, without putting an end to the difficulties. For what? “Any strictly institutional approach seems to come up irremediably, in Algeria, against constantly renewed obstacles, which find their origin in the very organization of the Algerian State,” notes the deputy in his report, of which Jeune Afrique has obtained a copy.
Frédéric Petit underlines that the numerous stakeholders he met in Algeria told him that they “consider that, structurally, the signed agreements do not bind the Algerian partner”. So what are these mechanisms, these levers, and these constraints?
The member lists several. The first: the Algerian army and nomenklatura control the country’s resources, which thus escape the scrutiny of Parliament and the Court of Auditors. Likewise, they control “the obligatory passages of national consumption very dependent on imports, such as ports and customs”. The administration, including at the highest hierarchical level, is burdened by instability, opacity, and precariousness, so it is very difficult to identify contacts likely to carry out long-term projects.
Ministers like administrations, the rapporteur also writes, “are hesitant to take initiatives, against a backdrop of fear of settling scores using legal procedures”, it is understood that any change is likely to shake up existing networks and interests.
Deep-rooted hostility
The waltz of ministers, senior officials, and walis (prefects) frequently calls projects into question, adds the MP. He also underlines that “Algerian administrations do not have public directories or intranet sites, professional exchanges only take place through personal messaging: when an administrative manager changes, there is no solution of continuity, and interlocutors outside the administration may not be informed for very long periods. “All of this “constitutes a structural obstacle to our traditional modes of diplomatic action,” observes Frédéric Petit.
He further notes that the prospects for interstate cooperation are jeopardized by hostility to France which finds solid anchor points in society, particularly within the powerful revolutionary family. Added to this are the progress of Islamism as well as public policies aimed at reducing the use of the French language.
The rapporteur illustrates this desire of the Algerian authorities to favor Arabic and English to the detriment of French with several examples. In September 2023, Algiers forced 22 establishments, which had 10,000 students, to renounce the “LabelFrance Éducation”, which the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs awarded to proud bilinguals of excellence, and which could constitute a first step towards approval. This decision, he notes, comes one year after the Algiers declaration (August 2022) announcing the “mutual facilitation of the opening of new educational establishments”.
In Algeria, there is only one French high school (compared to 17 in Morocco), which has two branches, one in Oran, and the other in Annaba. But the reception capacities of this Lycée international Alexandre-Dumas, which educates 2,119 students (80% of whom are of Algerian nationality or dual nationality), are saturated. The French authorities wanted the opening of a second high school – which would bear the name of Mouloud Feraoun, an Algerian writer assassinated by the OAS in March 1962. Algiers conditioned its agreement on the obligation of a quota of registrations for the benefit of the children of senior officials. Since then, the project has been at a standstill.
Second partner after China
Certainly, on the economic and commercial level, France remains Algeria’s second supplier after China (with 4.5 billion euros of exports in 2022), its second customer (with 6.6 billion euros in imports), and the third largest investor (2.6 billion euros). But this does not constitute a vector for improving the Franco-Algerian relationship as a whole, concludes the rapporteur.
French companies that work with Algeria or in the country indeed face the same difficulties as Algerian companies, in particular “normative instability” or “constraints of exchange controls. » Yet just as much, France has assets: seniority and density of exchanges, geographical proximity, language, and, increasingly, “forms of entrepreneurial symbioses between French and Algerian youth”.
The rapporteur therefore recommends calmly renegotiating the Franco-Algerian agreement of December 27, 1968, relating to the movement, employment, and stay in France of Algerian nationals and their families – which several French political leaders have recently suggested should be reinstated. cause –, in order to strengthen the development of bilateral economic ties. This revision, he believes, should take into account the question of professional circulation, both for Algerians in France and for French people in Algeria.
