France’s ambassador to Algeria, Stéphane Romatet, has triggered a political storm within the French right after pledging to restore visa issuance for Algerians to pre-crisis levels roughly 250,000 visas a year. The statement came in an interview with Algerian news site TSA, published Wednesday, July 15, in which Romatet insisted that citizens should not be made to pay the price for political disputes between states.
The backlash was immediate. Bruno Retailleau, leader of the Republicans party (LR) and a candidate in France’s presidential race, called it “a tragedy to see our diplomacy forced to bow its head over the president’s concessions to the Algerian regime.” Retailleau leveled three specific accusations at the Élysée: abandoning the push to deport “delinquent Algerians” back to their country, sacrificing the balance of the bilateral relationship, and failing to demand the release of French journalist Christophe Gleizes, imprisoned in Algeria since May 2024 and sentenced to seven years for “glorifying terrorism.”
Retailleau was not alone. National Rally leader Jordan Bardella joined the attack, branding the move a “capitulation of Macronism to the Algerian regime.” François-Xavier Bellamy also weighed in, listing what he believes the ambassador should have said instead starting with visas.
The French Foreign Ministry pushed back, stating that visa issuance is not part of the ongoing talks with Algeria and that “no numerical target has been set,” an attempt to contain the controversy without abandoning the détente track Macron set in motion when he reinstated Romatet in May, more than a year after recalling him at the height of the diplomatic crisis.
The episode exposes a deeper rift in French politics over Algeria: one camp pushing pragmatic normalization on economic and diplomatic grounds, another an ascendant right casting every gesture of deescalation as surrender. Retailleau, mid-campaign for the presidency, has found in the visa file a fresh opportunity to stake his claim as the voice of the hardline position on Algeria. The Élysée, meanwhile, is betting that gradual thaw remains the only route back to resolving the harder cases still on the table Gleizes’ file chief among them.
