Old wounds reopened between Algeria and France

Coinciding with the Christmas celebrations, the Algerian Parliament passed a law criminalizing French colonial practices between 1830 and 1962. The text is categorical, condemning “France's flagrant and continued violation of international law” during that period.

The fact that this law is unlikely to be recognized and applied internationally, according to numerous legal experts consulted in France and other European Union countries, does not alter its highly symbolic nature, enshrining an ethnic-national confrontation. Algiers not only demands that France “acknowledge the facts” but also apologize for them and compensate the descendants of the victims.

In this regard, the president of the Algerian Parliament, Ibrahim Boughali, listed the “serious crimes” committed by France under the terms of the approved law: nuclear tests, extrajudicial executions, large-scale physical and psychological torture, and the plundering of the country's material and personal wealth.

The passing of this law cuts short France's attempts, led in particular by President Emmanuel Macron, to achieve a consensual view of history that would allow the wounds to be definitively healed and a path of shared understanding, cooperation, and prosperity to be embarked upon.

Macron himself, when he was still a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, described French colonization as a “crime against humanity,” concluding that “France must apologize.” He later changed his position by commissioning an “objective” historical account that could serve as the basis for a consensus narrative between French and Algerian historians, which could then be recognized and accepted by politicians and societies in both countries.

After initially refusing to go down this path, Algiers then leaned toward a more ambiguous position, before moving to outright opposition as soon as France joined Morocco's plan on Western Sahara in 2024. Since then, relations between Algiers and Paris have continued to deteriorate, culminating in the adoption of the aforementioned text by Algerian lawmakers, described as a “manifestly hostile initiative” by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, a statement followed by the recall of the French ambassador to Paris and the expulsion of a dozen officials from the country.

At the same time, demonstrations are multiplying in France demanding an end to the privileged access to the country for Algerian visitors and immigrants, as well as the tolerance, if not the turning of a blind eye, of the French Social Security system with regard to the pensions it pays monthly to Algerian citizens who have returned to their country of origin or who have always remained there after having earned retirement rights payable by France.

Although Paris does not provide data considered confidential and personal, it is widely believed in France that Algeria is the country with the most centenarian pensioners in the world, who receive their payments punctually from the coffers of Paris without too many checks that could presumably uncover hundreds or even thousands of pensioners in the Maghreb country over 110 years of age.

Disagreements over facts and figures between Algeria and France have taken root in the minds of citizens of both countries. For example, historians in the North African country estimate that 1.5 million Algerians died in the War of Independence (1954-1962), a figure that their French counterparts reduce to 500,000, although they acknowledge that most of them were indeed Algerians.