Some texts wait on the Parliament table, crouched and without much hope from their creators, to have their moment of glory. And that is what he believed last Thursday, when the vote began on the resolution he had brought to the chamber to denounce the agreements signed between France and Algeria in 1968 after the North African country’s war of independence. Specifically, those that make it easier for Algerians to apply for residence permits. The RN proposal, that was the surprise, prevailed by one vote. This is the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic that the extreme right manages to push a text forward in the National Assembly. And it has been thanks to the support of the center-right.
offers Algerians specific clauses regarding movement, immigration and stay in France. It allows them to obtain a ten-year residence permit through an accelerated procedure. Within the framework of family reunification, family members also receive a certificate of stay for ten years from their arrival if the person they join has such a document. And, in the midst of the crisis in relations between both countries, the right – also the Republicans and the moderates of Horizons and MoDem – has been demanding its end for some time.
The result of the vote was historic. It arrived just two days before Algeria’s National Day (the anniversary of the start of the November 1, 1954 insurrection). It is not legally binding, and nothing obliges the Government to apply it. But on a symbolic level, the extreme right has achieved an undoubted victory, since it is the first time that a text it promotes in the chamber has been adopted.
The deputies of the RN (122 elected out of 123) and their ally from the Right Union for the Republic (15 deputies out of 15) voted massively in favor of this text that denounces said agreement. Of the 50 parliamentarians that make up the Republicans group, 26 voted in favor of the text. “When the RN defends projects or convictions that we share, there is no reason (…) not to vote for what we want for our country,” justified the head of the right-wing deputies, Laurent Wauquiez. The text, and this was perhaps the most surprising, was also supported by 17 deputies from the Horizons group, the party of Édouard Philippe, the main center-right candidate for the 2027 presidential elections.
Marc Lazar, professor of Political Sociology at the Paris Institute of Political Sciences (Science Po) and the Luiss in Rome, believes that there was a point of coincidence in the approval, since many deputies were absent during the vote. “But it is clear that a part of Los Republicanos (LR), like their voters, has decided that, from now on, the RN is a party like another and an agreement can be reached. If there were early elections and the RN had a good result, but some deputies were missing, they would help each other. I still wouldn’t call it an alliance, but it proves that there is increasingly more porosity between the two electorates,” he points out.
and author of the report commissioned in 2021 by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, to improve relations with Algeria, believes that this resolution will not help favor them. “For practical purposes, not much has changed. Algerians have had to apply for a visa to enter France for a long time, since 1986. And the problem is that there has never been a debate. It is only France that decides,” he points out.
Stora, on the other hand, does observe big changes at the national level. “The barrier between the right and the extreme right is falling. There have been relations, discussions, gestures between the Republican right and the RN for years, but they were more discreet. Thursday took place in broad daylight, and it reopens the question for the right of its membership in the RN. gaullismowhich is incompatible with the extreme right, [la organización terrorista OAS, vinculada a la extrema derecha, intentó asesinar al general Charles De Gaulle tras la guerra de Argelia]”, he points out.
Relations between both countries have been complicated in recent times with episodes such as the imprisonment of the Franco-Algerian writer. The situation today is at its worst, says Xavier Driencourt, who was ambassador in Algiers for eight years. “So nothing new will happen with this resolution,” he points out. This diplomat, however, believes that what happened in Parliament has several different causes and effects. “The RN did not expect to have this majority, but they managed to get it approved. Some see a political consensus on the Algerian question, others the unity of the right. I also believe that it was a bit by chance because there were many deputies missing. But it shows the hypocrisy of the politicians, because the parties of Gabriel Attal or Édouard Philippe had called to denounce this agreement and, when they are confronted with the facts, they vote against or are absent. This issue, which at the beginning was something taboo, only from the extreme right, today there is a certain unanimity. So it moves forward, and it will be important in the 2027 elections,” he predicts.
The Assembly vote, regardless of its effects, will go down in history and opens a leak in the containment dam that France had until now posed to Marine Le Pen’s party. “The RN is only strengthened thanks to the weakness of its adversaries. That is the lesson of the unfortunate incident that occurred on Thursday, October 30. This important setback marks a new milestone in the trivialization of this far-right party,” he was scandalized. . But, above all, it shows the progress of the idea of a necessary right-wing union so that the RN can govern in a system where the French have ended up voting by default for another party in the second round.
