The three-day visit has aimed to turn the page on months of tensions with the North African country, which earlier this year marked six decades of independence following 132 years of French rule.
It also came as European powers scramble to replace Russian energy imports — including with supplies from Algeria, Africa’s top gas exporter, which in turn is seeking a greater regional role.
In their joint declaration on Saturday, the two leaders said “France and Algeria have decided to open a new era … laying the foundation for a renewed partnership expressed through a concrete and constructive approach, focused on future projects and youth.”
At the signing ceremony, Tebboune addressed his guest in French, gushing over an “excellent, successful visit… which allowed for a rapprochement which wouldn’t have been possible without the personality of President Macron
himself.”
Ties between Paris and Algiers have seen repeated crises over the years.
They had been particularly cool since last year when Macron questioned Algeria’s existence as a nation before the French occupation and accused the government of fomenting “hatred towards France”.
Tebboune withdrew his country’s ambassador in response and banned French military aircraft from its airspace.
Normal diplomatic relations have since resumed, along with overflights to French army bases in sub-Saharan Africa.
‘Lack of courage’
After vowing to “build a new pact”, Macron was in the spiritual home of Rai music on Saturday, visiting a record shop made famous by French-Algerian singer DJ Snake’s recent hit of the same name, “Disco Maghreb”.
He also met athletes and artists and went for a somewhat chaotic walk in the streets where police struggled with onlookers trying to shake his hand or take photos.
On Friday evening, he had dinner with Algerian writer Kamel Daoud and other Oran personalities.
He had also met young entrepreneurs who quizzed him on the difficulties of getting visas to France, the decline of the French language in its former colony and the contentious issues around the two countries’ painful past.
Macron announced that an additional 8,000 Algerian students would be admitted to study in France this year, joining 30,000 already in the country.
He also announced the creation of a joint commission of historians to examine the colonial period and the devastating eight-year war that ended it.
But in France, both left and right-wing politicians were angered by the suggestion.
Socialist party leader Olivier Faure noted that Macron in 2017 had called French colonialism a “crime against humanity”, then later questioned the existence of Algeria as a nation prior to the colonial period.
Macron 2017 « la colonisation est 1 crime contre l’Humanité ». 2021 « Est-ce qu’il y avait une nation algérienne avant la colonisation ? ». 2022 « une histoire d’amour tragique ». La légèreté du traitement du PR insulte les mémoires blessées. https://t.co/bohRwjdVyy
— Olivier Faure (@faureolivier) August 26, 2022
“The lightness with which he deals with the subject is an insult to wounded memories,” Faure tweeted.
Far right leader Thomas Menage tweeted that Algeria should stop “using its past to avoid establishing true, friendly diplomatic relations”.
Macron’s visit was not universally welcomed by Algerians either.
“History can’t be written with lies… like the one that Algeria was created by France,” read an editorial in the French-language Le Soir newspaper.
“We expected Macron to erase this gross untruth during this visit,” it said, criticising him for a “lack of courage… to recognise his own faults and those of his country”.
Security meeting
Earlier on Friday, Macron laid a wreath at a monument to those who “died for France”, in the mixed Christian-Jewish Saint Eugene cemetery which was a major burial ground for Europeans during colonial times.
Later in the day he met young Algerian entrepreneurs and visited the iconic Grand Mosque of Algiers before heading to second city Oran.
Also on Friday, Macron and Tebboune presided over a “coordination meeting” involving security officials from both countries, “the first at this level since independence”, the Algerian presidency said.
The French army’s chief of staff General Thierry Burkhard, his Algerian counterpart Said Chanegriha and France’s Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu were among those in attendance, Algiers said.
Gas ‘good’ for Europe
Algeria is seeking a bigger role in the region, buoyed by surging energy prices that have filled the coffers of Africa’s top natural gas exporter following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Macron’s office said gas was not a major feature of the visit — although the head of French energy firm Engie, Catherine MacGregor, was in Macron’s 90-strong delegation.
The president said on Friday that Algeria had helped Europe diversify its energy supplies by pumping more gas to Italy, which last month signed a deal to import billions more cubic metres via an undersea pipeline from the North
African coast.
The deal is “good for Italy, it’s good for Europe and it improves the diversification of Europe,” he told reporters.
He also dismissed suggestions that Italy and France were “in competition”, noting that France only relies on natural gas for a small part of its energy mix.
The two leaders discussed how to bring stability to Libya, the Sahel region and the disputed territory of Western Sahara, according to Tebboune.
They also spoke at length about the spiky issue of French visas for Algerians, and Macron said Friday they had “very freely” discussed the human rights situation in Algeria.
“These issues will be settled in full respect of Algerian sovereignty,” Macron said.
He urged young Algerians “not to be taken in” by the “immense manipulation” of social media networks by foreign powers including Russia and China, which are both allies of Algiers.
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