Abrogate 1968? The JDD Forgets Treaties Are Not Torn Up at the Stroke of a Pen

Karim Meziane — Bruxelles, Belgique — 2026-09-06

On 12 August 2025, in the thick of the consular crisis, the JDD published an op-ed signed by Xavier Driencourt, former French ambassador to Algiers, and Fernand Gontier, under a programmatic headline: "The 1968 Accord, visa issuance… Cut off Algerian illegal immigration at its source." The two authors' diagnosis, as summarised by the press that relayed their text: the Franco-Algerian accord of 27 December 1968 "paralyses the removal" of Algerian nationals under OQTF removal orders and "exacerbates the migration crisis." The recipe: denounce the text, close the visa tap. Only one formality is missing from this programme: the law.

A brief legal reminder — all the more called for from a former ambassador. The 1968 accord — officially "on the movement, employment and residence in France of Algerian nationals and their families" — contains no denunciation clause. The Senate noted this in black and white in its information report No. 304 (2024-2025) devoted to international migration instruments: since the accord contains no clause allowing either party to denounce it, international law applies — in other words, the 1969 Vienna Convention, which permits the unilateral termination of a treaty only under conditions that no one can seriously invoke here. The jurist Serge Slama published an analysis of the scheme whose title says it all: a unilateral denunciation would be "a legal nonsense and counterproductive" (Le Club des juristes). A bilateral treaty is not torn up at the stroke of a pen: it is renegotiated by both parties, or it is not renegotiated at all.

Besides, the State the two signatories were calling to action never followed them. From the outset, Paris has spoken of "amendment" and "renegotiation," never of denunciation (Fil d'Algérie, diplomatic sources). When the National Assembly adopted, on 30 October 2025, at the initiative of the Rassemblement National, a motion calling for the accord to be denounced, the press had to point out that the vote carried no legal value (20 Minutes); the government did not denounce the accord — on the contrary, it called for renegotiation to get under way (Le Figaro, 4 November 2025). Algiers, for its part, treated the vote as it deserved: "a purely domestic French affair" (Le Figaro, 2 November 2025). You do not denounce a treaty by passing a motion in a single one of the two capitals.

The 1968 accord, let us recall, is not a favour granted to Algiers by an absent-minded state: it extends the Évian Accords and organises — as its very title indicates — the movement and residence of a community born of the two countries' shared history. And since op-eds of this kind are so fond of "reciprocity," let us ask the question they never ask: where was their indignation in 2021, when Paris cut the visas of the three Maghreb countries in a single gesture, with no notice given? The "rule" demanded today against Algeria, then, exists only when it serves the narrative; it vanishes the moment Morocco or Tunisia is concerned. Reciprocity, in short, is not a doctrine: it is an op-ed argument — and an op-ed commits no one.

As for the pretext — that the accord "paralyses" the removal of Algerians — the published figures refute it. Algerians top the list of foreigners actually removed from France (TSA); 2025 recorded an unprecedented level of arrests of Algerians in an irregular situation (ObservAlgérie); and since 2026 the French government has been announcing the resumption of removals, with Algeria having issued more than 140 consular laissez-passer to France since February 2026 (Europe 1; Anadolu). The "paralysis" described in the op-ed of 12 August 2025 appears in no official record: it exists only in its authors' argument.

Then there is the bill for the "cut it off at the source" recipe — for it has a price, and France has already begun to pay it. In the summer of 2025, Paris tightened its visa rules and restricted the travel conditions of senior Algerian officials (Le Parisien, 23 July 2025). A year later, the verdict is in the customs figures: bilateral trade has fallen below €9 billion and French exporters are deserting the Algerian market (TSA). "The standoff did not work": those are the words — reported by TSA — of France's own interior minister. Something has certainly been cut off: the order books of French companies. Immigration, for its part, has not dried up — it is not dried up by articles, even ones signed by two former diplomats.

The 1968 accord is old, perfectible, amendable: no serious observer disputes that. But it is bilateral, it is the fruit of a comprehensive settlement, and it governs the status of hundreds of thousands of families. Those who want to tear it up should first tell those families — and the businesses on both shores of the Mediterranean — what they intend to put in its place. Treaties, a small reminder for memoirists on media tours, are not torn up at the stroke of a pen: they are respected, renegotiated — and signed by both parties.