Paris, September 24 (Prensa Latina) French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne will visit Algeria on October 9-10 to intensify bilateral ties after the presidential meeting in August, her office announced today.
In a statement, the Hotel de Matignon, the headquarters of the country’s prime minister, said Borne’s trip will be embedded in the Joint Declaration of Algiers on Renewing the Franco-Algerian Alliance, agreed last month in the North African nation by leaders Emmanuel became Macron and Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
The senior official and her host, Aimene Benabderrahmane, will flesh out, through an intergovernmental committee, the points raised by the presidents on bilateral cooperation and issues of common concern, he stressed.
Macron and Tebboune ended in August a scenario of tension between the two countries that had escalated in 2021 following statements by the French leader and the latter’s accusation of alleged hate speech against France, which Algeria demanded to consult with the Paris ambassador and ban military planes from overflying its territory. The Algiers Joint Declaration establishes the commitment to inscribe relations in a dynamic of irreversible progress, based on trust and mutual respect, and on responses adapted to bilateral, regional and international problems.
On the table is the question of increasing supplies of Algerian gas to France amid the bleak prospects threatening Europe given the winter in the energy sector due to the Ukraine conflict and the boomerang effect of Western sanctions on Russia, a key supplier of hydrocarbons to the European Union countries.
Paris avoids mentioning the gas issue in its renewed approach to Algiers, but it is mentioned by pundits and the press whenever they discuss the links between the two nations, and Borne’s visit, of course, does not escape that vision.
Other European countries, notably Italy, have recently agreed to increase Algerian gas supplies.
France imports 17 percent of the precious hydrocarbon from Russia and 8 percent from Algeria, so the view that the new rapprochement is closely linked to the energy issue is widespread, although historic troubles and reconciliation 60 years later also emerge from the end of North Africa country’s war of independence.