France threatens to review migration pact with former colony

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has warned that Paris will reconsider a decades-old migration agreement with Algeria in response to the North African country’s refusal to take back deportees.

The threat on Wednesday comes after an Algerian national who France had reportedly unsuccessfully tried to repatriate to his home country killed one person and injured three police officers in a knife attack in Mulhouse over the weekend.

“The tragedy in Mulhouse was possible because this Algerian citizen was under orders to leave the country and was presented for repatriation 14 times... and each time refused,” Bayrou said at a news conference following an interministerial committee on immigration control meeting.

The 1968 treaty between Paris and Algiers went into effect six years after the African nation gained independence from France. The agreement grants special advantages to Algerian nationals settling in France, including measures to facilitate their arrival and the issuance of residence permits.

However, in recent months, French officials have repeatedly called for the pact to be reviewed, accusing the Algerian government of refusing to take back its citizens who have been ordered to leave France under the obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) deportation law.

“We must note that these agreements are not respected. They give considerable advantages to Algerian nationals... For several years, these agreements have not been respected,” Bayrou said.

He called the former French colony’s stance “a direct attack” on the agreements between the two countries. “We will not accept it,” he stated.

He said Paris will take four to six weeks to review Algiers’ implementation of the pact, and that while doing so, an “emergency list” of a “substantial” number of people considered “particularly sensitive” and who should return to their home country will be submitted to the Algerian government.

“If that is not the case, the government considers that the advantages offered under [the 1968 agreement] will have to be reconsidered... There is a strong feeling that the agreement has been betrayed,” Bayrou stated.

On Wednesday, Algeria’s Foreign Ministry said the French government imposed restrictions on entry into France for Algerians who hold “special travel documents” that ordinarily exempt them from visa formalities.

“The Algerian government expresses its surprise and dismay at this announcement of which it was not informed at all, as required by the provisions … of the Algerian-French agreement on reciprocal visa exemption for holders of diplomatic or service passports,” the ministry said in a statement.

Already fragile relations between France and Algeria have deteriorated since July, when French President Emmanuel Macron endorsed a controversial Moroccan autonomy plan for the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Algiers supports the separatist Polisario Front in demanding self-rule for the Sahrawi people in the former Spanish colony, which Morocco annexed in the 1970s.

Last week, Algiers denounced French Culture Minister Rachida Dati’s visit to Western Sahara – where she launched projects to strengthen France-Morocco ties – as a “detestable image of a former colonial power in solidarity with a new one.”