Bruno Retailleau advocates dialogue with Morocco, firmness towards Algeria

In an interview, the French Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau (Les Républicains, LR), welcomed the efforts made by Morocco to facilitate the return of people subject to the “obligation to leave French territory” ( OQTF) and intends to advocate dialogue with him. On the other hand, he wants to engage in a power struggle with Algeria, which is not making enough cooperation efforts in terms of consular return authorizations.

“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 have a dialogue”, on the subject of the “Obligation to leave French territory » (OQTF), declared Thursday Bruno Retailleau (Les Républicains, LR) in an interview given to RTL. Since 2023, Morocco has no longer slowed down the effectiveness of effective deportations 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 balance of power must be established,” insisted the French minister. And for good reason, Algiers does not do better than Rabat in terms of consular return authorizations. “For countries that are going to be recalcitrant, there is the visa policy: we grant Algeria 200,000 visas for 2,000 OQTF. It’s unbalanced and I want reciprocity,” he added.

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Retailleau announced that a new migration policy “will be deployed”. He intends to condition “visa policy on the granting of consular passes”. While Algeria obtained 205,853 visas, it “only took 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, too, “we are in the process of negotiating in Brussels the trade preference mechanism: playing on customs tariffs for countries which do not respect their commitments for the OQTF. I’m not ruling anything out.”