Emmanuel Macron will visit Algeria “soon” at the invitation of his counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the French president said in a congratulatory message on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Algeria’s independence, released Thursday, July 7 by the Algerian presidency.
“Mr. President and my dear friend, I have the immense pleasure, on this July 5, 2022 when Algeria is celebrating its 60th anniversary of independence, to address you, on behalf of France and in my own name, to you, Algeria and its people, a message of friendship and solidarity, accompanied by the most sincere congratulations to your country,” the letter read.
In this document, Mr. Macron mentions an upcoming visit to Algeria without giving dates. “In response to your invitation, I will be happy to come to Algeria soon to jointly launch this new bilateral agenda, built on trust and mutual respect for our sovereignties,” Macron wrote.
The French president added that he hoped that “we can work on it now to support this ambition on solid foundations and include it in a shared calendar”.
On Tuesday, Algeria celebrated with great fanfare the sixtieth anniversary of the end of 132 years of French colonization. Despite the passage of six decades, relations between the two countries are regularly punctuated by peaks of tension.
“Deepen” relationships
The last dates back to October 2021 when Emmanuel Macron claimed that Algeria had been built after its independence on “a memorial rent”, maintained by “the politico-military system”, arousing the ire of Algiers.
But relations have gradually warmed in recent months, and the French president and his Algerian counterpart expressed their desire to “deepen” them in a June 18 phone call.
On Monday, the French presidency announced the sending of a letter by Mr. Macron to Mr. Tebboune on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of independence, where the French president called, according to the Elysée, for the “strengthening of ties already strong” between the two countries.
At the end of April, Mr. Tebboune congratulated Mr. Macron on his re-election and invited him to visit Algeria. Mr. Macron made only one visit to Algeria, at the start of his first presidential term in December 2017.