Macron says will not apologise to Algeria for French colonisation

LONDON – French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not “apologise” to Algeria for French colonisation, but affirmed his desire to continue the work of memory  and reconciliation by soon welcoming his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune in 2023.

In an interview for Le Point magazine published late on Wednesday, Macron said it was not up to him to ask for forgiveness.

“That’s not what this is about, that word would break all of our ties,” Macron said.

“The worst thing would be to conclude: ‘We apologise and everyone goes their own way,” he said.

“Work on memory and history isn’t a settling of all accounts,” he stressed.

"It is, on the contrary, to maintain that there is something unspeakable, something misunderstood, something perhaps undecidable, something unforgivable," he added.

In recent years, Macron has made unprecedented steps to acknowledge torture and killings by French troops during Algeria’s 1954-62 war of independence, in a bid to improve the two countries' still rancorous relations. Yet the series of symbolic gestures has fallen short of an apology from France for its actions during the war — a longstanding demand from Algeria.

Macron said he hopes that Tebboune “will be able to come to France in 2023 and continue their unprecedented work of friendship” following his trip to Algiers last August.

During a brief stop in December 2017, Macron called for a “partnership between equals.” Months before that, during a trip to Algiers as a presidential candidate, he called colonisation a “crime against humanity.”

In 2018, the French leader recognized the responsibility of the French state in the 1957 death of a dissident in Algeria, Maurice Audin, admitting for the first time the military’s use of systematic torture during the war. He later made a key decision to speed up the declassification of secret documents related to the war, amid other gestures.

But in Ocrotber 2021, Macron drew Algiers’ anger after he criticized the Algerian "politico-military system" for surfing on "memorial rent" and questioned whether the North African country existed as a nation before being colonised.

"It may be a clumsy phrase that could have hurt. But these moments of tension teach us," he told Le Point.

“You have to be able to reach out your hand again and engage, which President Tebboune and I have been able to do,” he said.

Macron also called for the "appeasement" of tensions between Algeria and Morocco. 

“I do not believe in a war between these neighbours,” he said.

Algeria severed diplomatic relations with Morocco in August 2021, accusing Rabat of "hostile acts," a decision that Rabat described as completely unjustified.