Gauthier Delomez 11:16 am, November 10, 2021

Invited to react on the visas granted to nationals of the Maghreb countries and on the number of foreign delinquents expelled from French territory, Gérald Darmanin specified on Europe Matin a whole series of figures to defend the results of the five-year term of Emmanuel Macron.

Good figures for Gérald Darmanin.

The Minister of the Interior commented on the drop in the number of visas issued to nationals from Maghreb countries and on the number of foreigners expelled after an obligation to leave the territory (OQTF).

This summer, France had toughened its tone towards Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

The French government accused these countries of not wanting to take back their nationals in an irregular situation.

If this last measure does not seem to have had an impact, it is still too early according to the Minister of the Interior to draw conclusions.

Half of visas refused for Algerian nationals

To defend himself, Gérald Darmanin made a point of specifying on Europe 1 the number of visas accepted and refused by France since the beginning of the year 2021, even before the application of the measure.

"If I take the example of Algeria, there were 23,341 visas accepted over the first eight months of the year, and 10,828 refused (31% refusal). If I take Algeria since the September decision - October, that makes 12,609 visas accepted and 11,867 refused, or half and half. "

The minister explains that the accepted visas concern "people who have an economic link, business leaders, investors, executives who come to the territory", stressing that all these figures are almost similar for Morocco and a little lower for Tunisia.

899 foreign delinquents deported out of the 1,100 planned

On the OQTF, Emmanuel Macron's promise to perform 100% of these procedures before the end of the five-year term has not yet been kept.

"We are not 12% of people who leave," sweeps Gerald Darmanin, "but about 25%. It is only a quarter," he admits.

The Minister of the Interior wants to emphasize that France "manages to expel with enormous rates the people who are on file, radicalized, Islamists or delinquents".

To support his remarks, Gérald Darmanin evokes a request from President Emmanuel Macron, made last year, to establish a list of 1,100 foreign delinquents to be expelled. "They were the 1,100 most dangerous and who were leaving prison", he adds first, recalling that all nationals in the sights of the authorities must complete their prison sentence before being forced to leave the territory. . "Of the 1,100, there are already 899 who have been expelled. The objective was on December 31 (2021), so we get there when we discuss with countries, person to person", continues the minister inside.

Gérald Darmanin discusses the difficulties in carrying out these OQTFs: "Where it is difficult to do so is when countries question the fact that a person is certainly of a particular nationality, but has a child in France. C t is a complex question and that is what is difficult. Behind it, of course, there are families and people ".

This is the position of Algeria, for example, says Gérald Darmanin.

"It is this difficulty that we are trying to resolve. It is not easy, it cannot be resolved with the wave of a magic wand."