The French Minister of the Interior is going to Algeria on Monday and Tuesday. Laurent Nunez will try to renew ties between the two countries on security issues, in a context of persistent diplomatic tensions between Paris and Algiers.

Published on: 02/16/2026 - 08:32 Modified on: 02/16/2026 - 22:58

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A two-day trip to try to defuse diplomatic tensions between Paris and Algiers. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez will try, Monday February 16 and Tuesday February 17, to renew ties between the two countries during his trip to Algeria.

This highly sensitive trip was announced since the invitation from the Algerian Minister of the Interior Saïd Sayoud, extended several months ago to his French counterpart. But it was slow to materialize so that this visit appears as a first sign of thaw between the two countries.

Also read France-Algeria diplomatic crisis: in 2025, an irremediable shift?

“I am going to Algeria for a working meeting with my counterpart. There was a preparation phase between services at a technical level and so now we are moving on to the political phase,” commented Laurent Nunez on Friday, during a trip to Marseille.

If no meeting with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is planned at this stage, the French minister did not rule out this possibility on Monday on France Inter: "I will see what happens there."

Cautiously, he explained that during this “working meeting” all security issues would be “discussed”, namely the fight against terrorism, against drug traffickers and illegal immigration.

“Continue to dialogue with the Algerian authorities”

“I have always been confident in the reestablishment of security relations with Algeria (...) This visit is the culmination of this position, which is to continue to dialogue with the Algerian authorities on security issues. This seems essential to me,” added Laurent Nunez.

But the subject of readmissions, that is to say the return to their country of Algerian nationals in an irregular situation – under obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) – remains the most thorny. To date, no Algerian national under OQTF has been accepted by Algiers, according to a source close to the matter.

At the beginning of February, the French minister said he was waiting for "a move" before going to Algeria, a "start of a response" from Algiers on this subject as well as on the case of Christophe Gleizes, the French sports journalist arrested in May 2024 in Kabylia and sentenced on appeal, at the beginning of December, to 7 years in prison for "apology of terrorism".

Also readChristophe Gleizes: the journalist “is a victim of the Franco-Algerian crisis”

If there was a "primer" that could explain the materialization of the move, it was not made public.

The relationship between the two countries had deteriorated significantly since the summer of 2024 and France's recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a territory with undefined status according to the UN, where a conflict has pitted Morocco against the separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria, for 50 years.

Franco-Algerian tensions then continued to multiply between the kidnapping of an Algerian influencer opposing the regime of Abdelmadjid Tebboune in April 2024, the arrest in November 2024 of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, pardoned a year later by the Algerian president, the indictment of an Algerian consular agent in April 2025 or even the expulsion of twelve agents from the French embassy in Algiers a few days later.

“Positive signals” from both sides

“I find that there are positive signals being triggered on both sides,” recently estimated Sabrina Sebaihi, environmentalist MP, to AFP.

"On the one hand, we have the transfer of Christophe Gleizes near Algiers, the Algerian president who says 'I'm taking back all my nationals'. On our side, the Minister of the Interior says 'I'm going to go'. Perhaps we are in a moment of de-escalation of the crisis", further explained the MP for Hauts-de-Seine, who met the President of the National Assembly in Algiers.

The last trip by a Minister of the Interior to Algeria dates back to the visit of Gérald Darmanin, at the end of 2022. His successor Bruno Retailleau had crystallized the tensions, regularly trying to go to standoff, notably around the release of the writer Boualem Sansal.

Former socialist minister Ségolène Royal, who recently visited Algeria, acted as mediator during this visit, initiated in a personal capacity as president of the France-Algeria Association. She had come to plead for a “reconstruction of friendship between France and Algeria”.

Arriving in Algiers on Monday, Laurent Nunez does not intend to show his teeth like his predecessor, nor display ambitious objectives, the important thing being, according to diplomatic sources, to renew the dialogue, however tenuous, at the security level.

With AFP

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