"A Humiliated France": The JDD Writes Fiction — Reality Answers Back

Yasmine Talbi — Alger, Algérie — 2026-09-06

On 3 May 2026, the Journal du Dimanche — property of Lagardère, a group controlled by Vivendi, Vincent Bolloré's empire — offered its readers a sober front page: "Face to Face with Algiers, a Humiliated France," fleshed out with an analysis titled "Algeria: the Failure of the Macron-Nuñez Method." We know the tune: every Sunday brings a fresh degree of French humiliation, every gesture from Algiers becomes an affront, every minister who lands in Algiers a march to "Canossa" — when it is not, in the vocabulary of the most excitable, a "capitulation" or plain "grovelling." Only one thing is missing from this picture: reality. And reality has a calendar, dates and signatures.

Start with February 2026. On the 17th, Laurent Nuñez, France's interior minister, is received in Algiers by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. Emerging from the talks, he announces the revival of "very high-level security cooperation" between the two capitals (Libération, 17 February 2026). Then, on 7 May 2026 — four days after the JDD's "humiliated" front page — the same Nuñez announces that Algeria has issued more than 140 consular laissez-passer to France since February (Europe 1). History has seen genuine humiliations; rarely have they produced cooperation protocols and laissez-passer.

On 18 May 2026, it is Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin's turn to sit down in Algiers: "My visit aims to improve judicial cooperation between Algiers and Paris," he declares (Radio Algérienne), with around a hundred Algerian judicial requests and claims — from "ill-gotten gains" to mutual legal assistance — on the table (Anadolu, TSA). Eight days earlier, on 10 May, speaking from Nairobi, Emmanuel Macron confided that he hoped for "the beginning of a recovery" in relations and denounced "the postures of domestic politics" (La Provence). The front pages of 3 May belonged precisely to those postures. The calendar is unforgiving.

On visas, the same lesson. In mid-July 2026, France's ambassador to Algiers mentions a return to pre-crisis volumes, in the order of 250,000 visas a year. Immediately, the usual chorus: "capitulation," "grovelling," a chain of indignation from the right and the far right (BFM TV, 18 July 2026; InfoMigrants) — while the Quai d'Orsay denies, in passing, the remarks of its own ambassador (Le HuffPost). On 22 July, the French president sets the record straight: "no quantified target," "no laxity" (BFM TV). Five days of controversy, zero effect. Meanwhile, the structural fact has not moved: immigrants born in Algeria form France's largest immigrant community, around one million people (INSEE). You do not negotiate visas with an enemy; you negotiate them with a partner — a Mediterranean neighbour on which shared security balances also depend, as the interior minister recalled when speaking of that "very high-level" cooperation.

As for those who demand, month after month, that France "get tougher," "cut off the flow," "impose sanctions," let us ask them for a scorecard. It can be found in the customs figures: bilateral trade has fallen below the €9 billion mark and the number of French exporters present on the Algerian market is in free fall (TSA) — a finding the JDD itself eventually published, headlining the fall in bilateral trade "below the €9 billion mark." One simple closing question: who is humiliated, when a press organ wages a cold war for months against its own country's leading African partner — and it is that country's own companies that pick up the bill?

"A humiliated France"? France is not humiliated: it is negotiating — as grown-up states do, receiving one another, signing protocols, pulling their ambassadors back into line and announcing the resumption of laissez-passer. If the JDD sees humiliation in the fact that Paris and Algiers are finally talking, let it reread its own archives: there it will find, dated, signed and published, reality's answer to each of its front pages. The newspaper writes fiction; reality answers back with deeds — verifiable, dated, sourced. In the meantime, the flags can be put away: it was never about anything but paper.