Diplomacy: Tensions rise again between Paris and Algiers, which denounce the visa exemption agreement.

Algeria accused France on Thursday of shirking its responsibilities in the bilateral crisis.

Algiers announced, in a press release from its diplomacy, the denunciation of the agreement on visa exemption for holders of diplomatic and service passports , the suspension of which Paris announced the day before .

The letter, in which French President Emmanuel Macron made this announcement, "exonerates France from all its responsibilities and places all the blame on the Algerian side. Nothing could be further from the truth and reality," according to the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Relations between Paris and Algiers have been in an unprecedented crisis since the summer of 2024 following France's recognition of an autonomy plan "under Moroccan sovereignty" for Western Sahara, a territory that has been disputed for 50 years by Morocco and the Polisario separatists, supported by Algiers.

In a letter to his Prime Minister François Bayrou on Wednesday, Mr. Macron called for "more firmness" towards Algeria, denouncing its inflexibility on the migration issue and the detention of two French nationals, which Paris considers arbitrary.

Regarding the visa waiver agreement, Algiers indicated that "it was France alone that initiated such a request. By deciding to suspend this agreement, France is offering Algeria the opportunity to announce the pure and simple denunciation of this same agreement."

For Algiers, as soon as the crisis with France broke out, after the U-turn on Western Sahara, France "proceeded by injunctions, ultimatums and summons."

In his letter, Mr. Macron also asks his government to use the "visa-readmission" lever, which allows the suspension of the issuance of long-stay visas to citizens of a country whose authorities cooperate "insufficiently" to readmit their nationals in an irregular situation.

Emmanuel Macron notably motivated the crackdown on Algiers by the situation of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, sentenced to five years in prison for "undermining national unity", and the French journalist Christophe Gleizes, sentenced to seven years in prison in Algeria for "apology for terrorism".

Mr. Macron nevertheless assured that his "objective remains to restore effective and ambitious relations with Algeria."

On Thursday, Mr. Bayrou declared that France "is not in the mood for perpetual confrontation" with Algiers and hopes "to one day find balanced and fair relations."

The measures requested by the head of state from the government on Wednesday, "we will apply them not in the spirit of perpetual confrontation but in the spirit of one day finding relations that are balanced and fair," he declared.