Overview

• President Macron formally ordered the suspension of the 2013 visa-exemption agreement for official and diplomatic passports in a letter to Prime Minister Bayrou on August 6
• France has activated the 2024 immigration law’s visa-réadmission mechanism to refuse short-stay and long-stay visas for Algerian service and diplomatic passport holders
• Paris is pressing for the release of writer Boualem Sansal and journalist Christophe Gleizes, whose imprisonment in Algeria it deems arbitrary
• Algerian authorities rejected France’s tougher measures and announced that they will end free access to more than 60 properties used by the French embassy in Algiers
• The confrontation has frayed bilateral treaties dating to 1968 and deepened a long-standing crisis over migration cooperation and post-colonial tensions