Macron in Algiers and Portugal in the ″Great Game″ of the Western Mediterranean!
French President (PR) Emmanuel Macron landed yesterday in Algiers starting the second official visit to the “Maghrebian hexagon” as PR (2017 and 2022), which will end tomorrow, Saturday. The program of the visit includes a natural tête-à-tête with his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, a visit to the Great Mosque of Algiers and a stopover in Oran, the westernmost of the great cities of the Ottoman Empire.
The conversation with PR Tebboune will have the visa controversy on the table (Macron’s France, author of a 50% cut in the granting of visas to Algerians in September, maintains it). Another controversy concerns the question of memory, the historical and historiographical perspectives of both countries, but with the entire burden on Algeria, which awaits a truth about itself, dictated and validated by the ex-colonizer. Macron made some gaffes in this regard during the election campaign and needs to portray himself in private, from man to man, from PR to PR, to the leader of the offended. This is the main “annoying” between France and Algeria, memory, history, the recent past. Security in the Sahel is gaining more and more importance in the relationship between both republics, since in France’s accounts, before the state government in Mali in August 2020, the progressive departure of French troops would be the Algerians, true holders of the codes. locations. The return to the Sahel in Algerian uniforms will now be under Russian and not French baton. France cannot miss this front and for that very reason the importance of the natural gas issue, in this brief visit.
Ukraine, cutting off the supply of Russian gas to Europe, has refocused the importance of Algeria and its gas to Europe as an alternative. The diplomatic rumor that runs is that Macron presents Tebboune with a study proposal troika that Spain, Algeria and Morocco under French initiative, for the resolution of the matter “Western Sahara” and Morocco/POLISARIO. The current moment is a silent race for the recognition of the Moroccan plan of autonomy for the southern provinces, with Germany being the next most likely to do so. Now France wants to counter this and may present a proposal: Exclusive supply of Algerian gas to Europe, through the various maritime terminals that the project will build, in exchange for a “peaceful recognition” and in the European Union block of the Moroccan plan of autonomy for the Sahara integrated into the kingdom. It is here that Portugal enters the Algerian’s “big game”, as the German Chaceler said just this month that he would like to see Sines pumping to the whole of central Europe, in a project antagonistic to the French, given that France no longer authorizes the passage/construction of such pipelines coming from the Peninsula, through its territory.
Two strategies from two European leaders, on the same problem. France favors the entry of gas into Europe through the privileged transfer in its maritime terminals, while Germany favors this entry through Sines, taking advantage first of the proximity to the “useful Maghreb” and then the same excellent network of Spanish gas pipelines, which tore through the Pyrenees and would follow in aid of the coldest of Europe.
We are in the middle, as the Algiers/Paris/Berlin Axis finally passes through Lisbon and Madrid. Let there be nails to play this guitar!
Political scientist / Arabist www.maghreb-machrek.pt
Writes according to an old spelling