![\"German](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/afp_6a5a69bee280-1784310206.jpg\")
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, left, and Algeria\u2019s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune chat on the terrace of the Chancellery in Berlin on July 16, 2026, prior to bilateral talks [John MacDougall\/AFP]<\/p>\nBerlin, Germany \u2013 Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was welcomed with military honours at the historic Villa Borsig on Thursday, high above Lake Tegel, north of Berlin.<\/p>\n
Hours before the ceremony, he reminded a small group of guests, in French, just how far relations between the two countries had come.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlgeria and Germany were not in the same league,\u201d he told the delegation about past Algerian-German relations, in remarks heard by Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
The ceremony came two weeks before a tanker, the Tessala, landed at a floating terminal off Wilhelmshaven on Germany\u2019s North Sea coast loaded with gas from the GL2Z liquefaction complex near Oran, Algeria.<\/p>\n
It was the first ever liquefied natural gas export to Germany from Algeria\u2019s state energy company, Sonatrach.<\/p>\n
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier\u2019s invitation to Tebboune to visit Germany was part of a wider business and political outreach programme designed to bolster ties between the two countries.<\/p>\n
Thirty agreements were signed between German and Algerian companies at a bilateral economic forum in Berlin, including on hydrocarbons, renewables and energy transition, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and advanced technology.<\/p>\n
Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who met Tebboune at the Chancellery on Thursday, said the visit had been marked by \u201ca whole series of agreements\u201d \u2013 including on legal, investment and transparency issues \u2013 between German and Algerian companies, and he wished to see further progress on this issue.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Tebboune addressed members of the Algerian community at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, where he called Germany a great friend. He also revealed that the two countries had agreed to work together on green hydrogen, gas, helium and car manufacturing industries.<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, left, and Algeria\u2019s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune chat on the terrace of the Chancellery in Berlin on July 16, 2026, prior to bilateral talks [John MacDougall\/AFP]<\/p>\n
Why Algeria, and why now<\/p>\n
Tebboune\u2019s visit comes at a critical time for Europe, which has been desperately looking for new energy suppliers given the global tumult in recent years which has affected markets.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s share of EU imports of pipeline gas has collapsed since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, from about 40 percent in 2021 to approximately 6 percent last year.<\/p>\n
In January, the European Council adopted a regulation banning Russian LNG and pipeline gas outright from March 18, 2026, with transition periods for existing contracts.<\/p>\n
Algeria has helped make up some of this shortfall, with Norway now supplying 54.4 percent of the EU\u2019s gaseous natural gas imports in 2025 and Algeria second at 18.5 percent. Algeria\u2019s role appears to be increasing, with this share rising to 20 percent of EU pipeline imports in the first quarter of 2026.<\/p>\n
Merz has acknowledged this, saying that Algeria is playing \u201ca very important contribution to Europe\u2019s security of energy supply\u201d and pointing out that the country also holds\u00a0\u201csignificant raw-material deposits, among them natural gas, oil and rare earths\u201d.<\/p>\n
Rare earths are among the materials Europe has spent three years trying to source from outside China and Russia.<\/p>\n
Standing beside Merz on Thursday at a joint news conference at the Chancellery in Berlin, Tebboune offered words Germany must have wanted to hear.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are careful to be a reliable supplier \u2014 we always meet our contractual delivery obligations,\u201d he said, and promised that Algerian supplies would not only be destined for Germany, but all of Europe.<\/p>\n
This pledge comes at a critical time for Europe, with Qatari LNG exports disrupted by the US-Israel war on Iran, after Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) now forecasts that the United States will overtake Norway as the EU\u2019s main gas supplier in 2026.<\/p>\n
Amid these difficulties, it is convenient that Algerian gas is able to directly reach Europe via a sub-Mediterranean pipeline.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlgeria is strategically central for Europe, above all for Germany, if it is to get its industry back on its feet in the next three to five years,\u201d Michael Ayari, Algeria analyst at the International Crisis Group, told the Frankfurter Rundschau. \u201cIt could ramp up its gas deliveries and thereby compensate for the loss of Russian gas.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Algerian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/reuters_6a5a2680-1784292992.jpg\")
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune speaks during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, July 16, 2026 [Nadja Wohlleben\/Reuters]<\/p>\n
Behind that sits the Trans-Saharan pipeline, a line stretching approximately 4,000km (2,500 miles) and intended to carry up to 30 billion cubic metres (1.06 trillion cubic feet) of Nigerian gas a year across Niger and Algeria to Europe.<\/p>\n
Sonatrach began welding its own 1,210km (752 miles) section of this pipeline in June, which will feed into the national grid and Hassi R\u2019Mel, northern Algeria, Africa\u2019s largest gasfield.<\/p>\n
The hydrogen corridor<\/p>\n
Hydrogen, considered a cleaner energy source than LNG, became a prominent part of the news conference. Both Tebboune and Merz returned to the issue of the Southern Hydrogen Corridor, a 3,300km (2050 miles) dedicated hydrogen pipeline linking North Africa to Italy, Austria and Germany. It is recognised as a Project of Common Interest under the EU\u2019s TEN-E regulation, which should speed up the approval of permits and access to money from the Connecting Europe Facility. Design capacity, according to the project\u2019s promoters, is 4 million tonnes of green hydrogen a year.<\/p>\n
Tebboune called it a pioneering project and thanked Germany for backing it, while Merz said Berlin would drive the corridor forward together with Italy.<\/p>\n
On January 21, 2025, Algeria, Tunisia, Italy, Austria and Germany signed a Joint Declaration of Political Intent in Rome, at a ministerial attended by European Commission representatives and the EU body now lists the corridor as a \u201cTeam Europe initiative\u201d under its Global Gateway strategy.<\/p>\n
Transmission operators have begun feasibility studies. The pipeline would carry hydrogen produced in Algeria, the corridor\u2019s main production hub, through neighbouring Tunisia and across the Mediterranean to Italy, Austria and Germany, with initial work under way on the Algerian and Tunisian sections.<\/p>\n
The corridor has political backing at the highest level, underlined by Merz\u2019s support on Thursday, and strong interest from industrial customers along the route. What it still needs are binding offtake agreements, the long-term purchase contracts that would allow investment decisions to move forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the Algerian side, the expectation is that Germany now sends clear signals that green hydrogen produced in Algeria will actually be bought,\u201d Oliver Blank, managing director of the German-Algerian Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Algiers, told ARD. No German company has yet signed an offtake agreement for Algerian hydrogen.<\/p>\n
The question he would not answer<\/p>\n
One name went unmentioned in the opening statements. Christophe Gleizes, the French freelance sport journalist and contributor to the magazines So Foot and Society. He was arrested in Tizi Ouzou in May 2024 while reporting on the football club JS Kabylie and convicted of glorifying \u201cterrorism\u201d over alleged contacts with the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie.<\/p>\n
He was sentenced to seven years in June 2025, and an appeals court upheld the sentence on December 3. Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom NGO, describes him as the only French journalist currently imprisoned anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n
When a German reporter asked Tebboune about appeals for clemency from Gleizes\u2019s supporters, asking the president to pardon the journalist, he gave a firm but not dismissive response.<\/p>\n
\u201cOut of respect for the Algerian judicial system, I will not answer this question except on Algerian soil,\u201d he replied. \u201cI am now in Germany, not in Algeria.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cases of this kind have moved between Algiers and Berlin before, including the issue of detained Franco-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal. He was pardoned on humanitarian grounds in November 2025 following a German request and flown to Berlin for treatment.<\/p>\n
Merz closed the news conference with condolences for the children killed in an orphanage fire in Dar El Beida, outside Algiers, on the eve of the visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Berlin, Germany \u2013 Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was welcomed with military honours at the historic Villa Borsig on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[2384,7023,3030,112,1414,814,71,73,234,190,4174,38,25149,2068,13131,1158,928],"class_list":["post-131237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-africa","tag-algeria","tag-austria","tag-berlin","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-nigeria","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-opinions","tag-politics","tag-renewable-energy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116936918148536826","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}