French Interior Minister Praises Morocco’s Cooperation on Migrant Returns, Urges Tougher Stance on Algeria

"Morocco is a friendly country that I respect enormously, I have already had my counterpart the Minister of the Interior (Abdelouafi Laftit), we will first dialogue," about the "Obligation to leave French territory" (OQTF), said Thursday Bruno Retailleau (Les Républicains, LR) in an interview with RTL. Since 2023, Morocco no longer hinders the effectiveness of actual returns to the border once the obligations to leave French territory (OQTF) have been issued. The kingdom agrees to take back its nationals.

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Regarding Algeria, "a power struggle must be instituted," hammered the French minister. And for good reason, Algiers is no better than Rabat in terms of consular return authorizations. "For countries that will be recalcitrant, there is the visa policy: we grant Algeria 200,000 visas for 2,000 OQTFs. It is unbalanced and I want reciprocity," he added.

Retailleau announced that a new migration policy "will be deployed". He intends to condition the "visa policy on the granting of laissez-passer" consular. While Algeria has obtained 205,853 visas, it "has only taken back 2,191 of its nationals," he lamented. And to continue: "Some countries, we subsidize them with development aid. From now on this aid will be conditional," currently, also, "we are negotiating in Brussels the mechanism of commercial preference: play on customs tariffs for countries that would not respect their commitments for the OQTFs. I don’t rule anything out".