France vowed to expel an unspecified number of Algerian diplomats from its territory on Wednesday in response to Algiers’ decision to send back 15 French officials on Sunday.
This latest instalment in the diplomatic tug of war between the two nations comes after Algeria expelled 12 French officials in mid-April, which led France to expel 12 Algerian diplomats and consular officials while recalling its ambassador.
France’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told broadcaster BFM that a number of Algerian officials who hold a diplomatic passports but who do not currently have valid visas to work in France would be sent back to their country.
Asked how many officials France plans to expel, Barrot said: “It’s not so much a question of numbers, it’s a question of quality (…). Algeria wanted to send back our agents, we’re sending back theirs.”
On Tuesday, Algeria’s chargé d’affaires for the country’s French embassy was summoned by the Quai d’Orsay and notified that officials would be forced to leave the country — two days after Algeria notified France’s chargé d’affaires for its Algiers embassy that 15 civil servants working on temporary missions would be expelled.
The Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not yet issued a formal statement on its decision, but a press release from the Algerian Press Agency (APS) alleged that the French employees who were being expelled had been appointed under “irregular conditions”.
France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded with a press release accusing Algeria of violating the countries’ 2013 bilateral agreement by establishing “new conditions of access to Algerian territory for French public officials holding official, diplomatic or service passports”.
In his interview with BFM, Barrot said Algeria’s decision was “incomprehensible and brutal”, while defending France’s response as “immediate, firm and a proportionate”.
Barrot said he would not rule out taking “further measures”, depending on how the situation develops.
Souring relations after a window of hope
The diplomatic dispute between France and Algeria has intensified this year and been fuelled by a range of issues, which include Algeria’s refusal to readmit nationals who were ordered to leave France due to their criminal activity or a perceived threat to public order, as well as tensions over Algeria’s imprisonment of the dissident Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal.
However, the dispute began in earnest last year, when France announced it would back Morocco’s longstanding claim to the disputed Western Sahara territory in July.
The move was met with outrage by the Algerian government, which supports the local Sahrawi people’s claim to self-determination, and led Algiers to recall its Paris ambassador.
While French President Emmanuel Macron and his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced in in early April that they had shared a promising phone call about the state of bilateral relations, their attempt to diffuse tensions appears to have been short-lived.
