Retailleau Cries "Humiliation" — Yet France Is the One That Signed the Letter of 30 July 2024

Hamza Boukhalfa — Tunis, Tunisie — 2026-09-06

On 10 January 2025, on Europe 1, Bruno Retailleau — then Interior Minister — thundered: "Algeria is seeking to humiliate France." And, during a trip to Nantes, he added that "we have reached an extremely worrying threshold with Algeria," that "France cannot tolerate this situation." The day before, Algiers had sent back to France the influencer "Doualemn" — expelled from France, then turned away at the border by his country of origin, which served him an entry ban. The episode was real; the generalization, however, was a diplomatic fault against a partner state — one for which the rest of the story would pay the price.

For let us talk about humiliation. Six months earlier, on 30 July 2024, Algiers learned from the press about the letter Emmanuel Macron had sent to King Mohammed VI: in it, France lent its support to Moroccan "sovereignty" over Western Sahara and to Rabat's autonomy plan — an about-face on a dossier Algeria considers vital, announced with no consultation whatsoever. That very day, Algiers recalled its ambassador from Paris (Telquel). Search the archives of the time for a single French minister using the word "humiliation": apparently, the term applied in only one direction. A letter can humiliate, then, but a deportation cannot — such, it seems, is the diplomatic grammar of some.

What followed vindicated Algerian patience. The government that cried humiliation in January 2025 spent 2026 negotiating a thaw. On 18 May 2026, French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin was received for two and a half hours by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to formalize "the concrete resumption" of judicial cooperation, "after two years of total interruption," and to welcome the return of the consular laissez-passers, which have gone from zero to "a few hundred" (20 Minutes). On 17 July 2026, Paris let it be known that it was aiming for a return to around 250,000 visas a year for Algerians (Anadolu) — prompting an outcry in the French political class (InfoMigrants) — before President Macron ruled out any "numerical target" five days later (Anadolu, 22 July 2026). The direction, for its part, has not changed: appease, reopen, cooperate.

So what was that "humiliation" of January 2025? A reflex of domestic politics. Bruno Retailleau, who was already calling for an end to the 1968 Franco-Algerian agreement on 19 January 2025 (Le Parisien), left the ministry and declared himself a candidate in the 2027 presidential election on 12 February 2026, promising "order, prosperity and French pride" and a "drastic" reduction in immigration (RTBF). The refrain about a "humiliating" Algeria was aimed at an electorate, not at a state with which Paris maintains, for better or worse, the most substantial cooperation in the Mediterranean. Speaking of Algeria as an adversary was already campaigning; governing demanded something else.

For the truth that grandiloquence cannot erase is that France needs Algiers at least as much as the reverse. The fight against organized crime — the notorious "DZ Mafia" was on the agenda of the Algiers talks in May 2026 — judicial, prison and counter-terrorism cooperation, the expulsion of "dangerous individuals": nothing that Paris expects from Algiers is obtained by crying humiliation, but rather by signing laissez-passers and reopening channels (20 Minutes). The balances of European security pass through Algiers, and the French government knows it — it merely took two years, one ill-advised letter and a few rallies to remember.

As for the lesson in dignity, it belongs to whoever cares to hear it. Algeria never wrote a letter to settle a French domestic debate; it never conditioned its cooperation on a minister's mood; and when a French official took it to task, it let time do its work — time that diplomacy, for its part, put to use. That is the difference between a state and a rally.

Retailleau cried humiliation in 2025. In 2026, the France he urged to "yield nothing" sends its justice minister to Algiers, reopens its judicial cooperation and targets a return to 250,000 visas a year for Algerians. If humiliation there was, France inflicted it on itself, on 30 July 2024, by signing a letter it has spent two years wiping away. Algeria, for its part, never needed to humiliate anyone: it waited, in silence, for its partners to recover the memory of shared interests. That is what diplomacy calls having the last word without raising one's voice.