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French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez is expected to visit Algeria at the end of November or early December with a view to relaunching bilateral cooperation in the security and migration fields, we learned this Sunday. THE Young Independent from a responsible French source in Paris.
“This visit is being prepared and contacts have already been established between Algerian and French officials with a view to making this important visit a reality,” said the same source who specified that invitations were sent to French officials to mark the ground for this visit.
“These contacts were established at the request of the French side the day after the appointment as Minister of the Interior of Mr. Nuñez in the government of Sebastien Lecornu,” added the same source.
According to this government official, official invitations were thus transmitted by the Algerian authorities to French officials to go to Algiers and agree on files to be discussed between Nuñez and his Algerian counterpart Said Sayoud.
This visit is part of the approach adopted by Mr. Nunez “to promote a calm and constructive dialogue between Paris and Algiers”, breaking with the tensions which marred the path taken by his predecessor Bruno Retailleau, explained the same source.
In an interview published Saturday 1er November in the Parisian daily Nuñez denounced the populist method of his predecessor which led to an impasse in relations between the two capitals.
“Those who make the French believe that arm wrestling and brutal methods are the only solution, the only way out, are wrong. It doesn’t work in any area,” he said, deploring the fact that “the channel is completely cut today” between the ministries of the two countries.
“Whether with the DGPN (General Directorate of the National Police), the DGGN (General Directorate of the National Gendarmerie) and with the intelligence services, there is no longer any exchange of operational information. And, moreover, the consequence is that Algeria has no longer accepted its nationals in an irregular situation since last spring. We no longer have a pass either,” underlined the new tenant of Place Beauvau.
However, Nuñez says he sees “signals” of an improvement in Franco-Algerian relations. “The Algerian Minister of the Interior recently wrote to invite me,” he announced.
Other signs of this warming are the decision taken by the French authorities to grant accreditations to the twelve Algerian consuls appointed by Algeria and who are on site in France. “These days there will be the issuance of three emergency accreditations which concern three consuls general and in return the Algerian authorities should for their part act by reciprocity,” the French government official also informed Le Jeune Indépendant.
The regularization of these diplomats is supposed to lead to the handling of the files of Algerians in an irregular situation who have been subject to an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF), continued the same source. The French minister announced that 500 forced removals of Algerians could have taken place by the end of October 2025, compared to 1,400 last year over the same period. According to Nuñez, the freezing of relations between the two countries resulted in the total cessation of migration cooperation, explaining that Algeria no longer accepts its nationals in an irregular situation since last spring.
Algeria had insisted on processing the files of all Algerian nationals targeted by OQTFs on a case-by-case basis. The resumption of consular cooperation is likely to ease tensions on this issue, estimates the same government source.
Nunez deplored the adoption in the National Assembly of a resolution by the RN aimed at “denouncing” the Franco-Algerian agreement of 1968, expressing regret at the “conditions in which this vote took place”.
Paris hopes that “the resumption of work between Nuñez and Sayoud” will also extend to security issues, particularly in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel, taking into account the fact that the two countries are linked by the imperative of exchanging information on the terrorist threat.
It should be noted that Algeria has engaged in an operation to take charge of security and migration issues with Spain. Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska visited Algeria on October 19.
Furthermore, sources close to the Elysée do not rule out a possible meeting between President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and his counterpart Emmanuel Macron during the G20 summit which will take place on November 22 and 23 in Johannesburg, South Africa.