Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune will head to Paris in the second half of June, on a visit that was expected in May, after turning the page on the latest tension between Algeria and France.

And a statement issued by the Algerian presidency stated that today, Tebboune received a phone call from French President Emmanuel Macron to congratulate Eid Al-Fitr. According to the statement, the two presidents discussed "bilateral relations and ways to enhance them, including the state visit of the President of the Republic to France, and agreed on the second half of next June as a date" for it.

The statement continued, "Work is ongoing and continuous by the two teams of the two countries to make the visit a success, which will come ten months after Macron's state visit to Algeria, in a step to improve relations that deteriorated in the fall of 2021."

Macron's visit cooled the tension between the two countries, but in February a new diplomatic crisis arose due to the assistance of the French consulate in Tunisia, the French-Algerian activist Amira Bouraoui, to travel to France.

Despite a decision banning her from leaving Algeria, Bouraoui entered Tunisia on February 3, before Tunisian security stopped her while she was trying to board a flight to Paris.

She was finally able to travel to France on February 6, despite the Tunisian authorities' attempt to deport her to Algeria.
Algeria considered that its travel to France constituted a "secret and illegal evacuation" that was carried out with the help of French diplomats and security personnel, and summoned its ambassador to Paris, Saeed Moussa, for consultations.

A month ago, Presidents Tebboune and Macron ended this crisis, and "agreed to strengthen channels of communication ... to prevent the recurrence of this kind of unfortunate misunderstanding," according to the Elysee. The Algerian ambassador returned to Paris.
This came during a phone call between them to remove the "misunderstanding".

Amira Bouraoui, a 46-year-old doctor, was known in 2014 for her participation in the "Barakat" movement against the late President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's candidacy for a fourth term.

She was imprisoned in 2020 on several charges and then released on July 2, 2020. She faces a two-year prison sentence for “insulting” Islam due to comments she made on Facebook.

Among the fruits of the improvement of relations between Algeria and France, which colonized Algeria for many years and emerged from it after bloody events, the edition of the history of the two countries, was the holding of the first meeting of the Joint Historians Committee on the period of France’s colonization of Algeria last Wednesday to “consider the historical period” extending from the beginning of colonialism (1830) until independence ( 1962).

On the Algerian side, the committee included five historians: Mohamed El Korso, Lahsan Zghidi, Jamal Yahyaoui, Abdel Aziz Filali and Idir Hashi, headed by Abdel Majid Sheikhi, advisor to President Tebboune.

On the French side, the committee is chaired by Benjamin Stora, with members of the historians Florence Audovitz, Jacques Frémaux, Jean-Jacques Gordy and Tramore Kimonour.

The first meeting took place via the Internet, according to what was announced by the Algerian presidency, which clarified that “the Algerian side presented a working paper in accordance with the basic principles contained in the Algeria statement” signed on the occasion of President Macron’s visit, and “as well as the statement of the high-level intergovernmental committee” that was held in Algeria in October. oct.

The French presidency affirmed that this independent commission "will first work on the origins and causes of French colonization of Algeria in the nineteenth century, through an inventory of archive documents deposited in France and Algeria, which deal in particular with the colonial invasion."

In a second phase, topics related to "the period of the twentieth century, especially the sequence of war and decolonization," can be discussed, according to the Elysee statement.

In 2020, Algeria half-heartedly received a report prepared by historian Benjamin Stora, commissioned by Macron, in which he called for a series of initiatives to achieve reconciliation between the two countries. The report was devoid of any recommendation for an apology from the French side, which Algeria has constantly demanded.

Macron reaffirmed at the beginning of the year that he would not ask the Algerians for "forgiveness" for France's colonization of their country, but he hopes to receive his Algerian counterpart in Paris this year to continue working with him on the file of memory and reconciliation between the two countries.

He explained, "The worst that can happen is to say, 'We apologize and each of us will go our own way'," stressing that "the work of memory and history is not an inventory of calculation, it is quite the opposite."