French Prime Minister François Bayrou announced on Wednesday that Paris would be reexamining the 1968 migration pact that has historically made it easier for Algerians to settle in France. This follows months of campaigning by hardline anti-immigration Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who has accused Algiers of trying to “humiliate” the French people.
The time for diplomacy, it seems, is drawing to a close. French Prime Minister François Bayrou on Wednesday announced that his government would be spending up to six weeks re-examining all of the immigration agreements struck between Paris and Algiers since Algeria won its independence from France in 1962. In the coming weeks, he added, the French government would also present Algiers with a list of Algerian nationals living in France that Paris was determined to send back to their home country.
Retailleau has for weeks now accused the Algerian government of trying to “humiliate” France, and Algier’s alleged refusal to work with Paris to allow the deportation of undocumented Algerian nationals living in France has been a core part of his growing list of grievances.
Mohsen-Finan said that both countries still carried vastly distant perceptions of this painful history.
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