The Diplomat
Algeria has already taken the first step towards thawing trade relations with Spain, reduced to a minimum as a result of the diplomatic crisis caused by the Government’s support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Sahara, a month after it occurred. the return to Madrid of the Algerian ambassador.
The Algerian Association of Banks and Financial Institutions (ABEF) has given instructions to authorize the importation into the country of a series of poultry products. Thus, in a note dated January 14, reported by the media ‘Tout sur l’Algérie’, it gives the green light for broiler chicks, laying pullets and eggs intended for incubation to enter the country again from Spain, Europa Press reports.
ABEF was the association that, after the Algerian president, Abdelmayid Tebune, suspended the Treaty of Friendship with Spain in June 2022, ordered the freezing of all banking operations linked to exports and imports.
Although the Algerian Government publicly said that this measure had been reversed, the reality is that trade between the two countries has been almost paralyzed since then, particularly in relation to Spanish exports to the Maghreb country, while imports have decreased. maintained without much change because Algeria remained the main gas supplier to Spain in 2023 – 29.2% of the total, according to Enagás-.
“It is a completely logical and predictable step,” the president of the Algerian-Spanish Circle of Commerce and Industry (CCIAE), Djamel Buabdallá, commented to the aforementioned media. “After the return of the Algerian ambassador to Madrid and the opening of new Air Algerie lines with Spain, we were eagerly awaiting the thaw in commercial exchanges, something that is already happening gradually,” he added.
The Algerian business official warned that trade between the two countries will take time to recover to pre-crisis levels. Likewise, he stressed that “Algeria has implemented measures to protect its economy and favor its industry” and therefore it can be expected that it will focus more on importing inputs and not finished products from Spain.
The new Algerian ambassador, Abdelfetá Daghmun, arrived in Madrid on Thursday, December 14, thus closing a period of 19 months without Algiers being represented at the highest level.
The Algerian Government decided to call its then ambassador to Spain, Said Musi, for consultations the day after Rabat made public the letter from the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in which he conveyed to Mohamed VI support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Sahara as “the most serious, credible and realistic basis” to resolve the conflict.
The step was motivated, as the Algerian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Attaf, later acknowledged in an interview in Al Jazeera, by the position expressed by Sánchez regarding the Sahara in his speech before the UN General Assembly last September, since that in his opinion there was a “change” of position.
Then, the President of the Government did not mention the Moroccan autonomy plan and limited himself to supporting “a mutually acceptable political solution within the framework of the United Nations charter and in the resolutions of the Security Council.”
Sánchez himself congratulated himself last week on the return of the Algerian ambassador. “I have always claimed that Algeria is a friendly country and that we must and can also count on that friendship,” he said before the Spanish ambassadors. “We are going to continue working to maintain the best relations with this strategic partner and in that sense we celebrate the arrival of the new ambassador to our country,” he added.
