Emmanuel Macron was flying back to Paris after a two-day visit to South Korea. The French president was reviewing his trip to Seoul with his diplomatic adviser Emmanuel Bonne and members of his delegation. When he spotted Sabrina Sebaihi, president of the France-South Korea friendship group at the Assemblée Nationale (the Green MP has a long-standing passion for Korea and speaks the language), he changed topics and countries, asking her: “So, what do we do about Algeria?” The French-Algerian lawmaker is well-versed in debates over the strained relationship between Paris and Algiers, and Macron sought her view that day on how to revive the stalled relationship.
“The president wants to reconcile with Algeria before the end of his term,” Sebaihi said in a later interview. She is not the only one to have this impression among those who discuss the Algeria issue with the president. Clearly, Macron does not want to leave the Elysée with a failure in Algiers. Such a disappointment would be all the more bitter, given the symbolic investment he put in during his first term.
It is worth recalling that in 2020, he gave the issue of memory regarding Algeria “almost the same status as the Holocaust for [President Jacques] Chirac in 1995.” The report he commissioned from historian Benjamin Stora, submitted in January 2021, was meant to provide him with a methodology to achieve the reconciliation he sought.
You have 72.1% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
