PARIS — France will ask the European Commission to look at whether Algeria has broken its association agreement with the European Union, Reuters reported Friday, in a trade dispute Paris says is getting worse for French firms.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux made the announcement at a news conference. The agreement, he said, “stipulates the possibility to take appropriate measures for the non-respect of commitments.”
“We ask the Commission to examine immediately the conditions for their activation,”
He did not detail which commitments Algeria was said to have failed to uphold.
Paris decided to make a formal request because the situation for its companies was worsening, a French diplomatic source said. On Nov. 6, the Treasury Department met different French industries to discuss the Algerian restrictions, according to two people aware of the matter. Algeria has not announced the restrictions.
Wheat and urea at the centre of the dispute
Diplomats told Reuters in October that Algiers had imposed a near-blanket ban on French imports in late July. Officials had also been instructed to suspend urea shipments to France, they said.
That halt matters. Algerian supplies account for around 30% of French urea imports, diplomats and industry officials have said.
Grain tells a longer story. Algeria was once the biggest overseas buyer of French wheat, but it has not imported any from France since July 2024. Traders say French supplies have repeatedly been left out of Algerian state tenders, though no formal ban has been announced.
As with the earlier restrictions, the Algerian government has made no formal announcement about urea exports or imports of French goods, the officials said. Algeria’s embassy in Paris was not immediately available for comment.
A relationship that soured over Western Sahara
Ties between Paris and Algiers have been complicated for decades. They deteriorated in 2024, when President Emmanuel Macron backed a plan for autonomy for Western Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty.
Algeria supports the Polisario Front, which has sought a separate state in Western Sahara since former colonial power Spain left in 1976.
France and Algeria declared last year that the relationship was back to normal. It has since soured again.
The Commission has been here before, at least on paper. In June 2025 it registered a trade barrier alleging Algeria had blocked imports of French agricultural and food products since August 2024 by delaying or failing to issue the import authorisations exporters need.
That complaint, updated on the Commission’s website in March 2026, focuses on dairy products. French exporters have had trouble getting the sanitary import waivers they need to sell milk and dairy goods in Algeria, and the complaint says the approval process lacks clear deadlines and has been used to restrict trade.