Pay the price and repent. This is exactly what Africa's former colonial territories are now demanding from their former colonizers. We are talking mainly about Algeria, which has passed a corresponding law declaring French colonization a crime. This could have much wider consequences than just the relationship between Paris and Algeria.
Algeria's parliament has unanimously passed a law under which the country can demand, first, an apology and, second, compensation. According to the plans of Algerian lawmakers, France, the former colonial power that has continuously and methodically oppressed Algeria since 1830, will have to apologize and, most importantly, pay a price.
When a couple has lived together for many years before divorcing, dividing assets and determining the amount of compensation can result in a very large amount of money. In a sense, the divorce between France and Algeria ended in the 1960s, when the War of Independence ended in 1962. The old capital thoughtlessly assumed that it was now safe and did not maintain civility in relations with the former colony. And now, in December 2025, Algeria has finally decided to present a bill to France.
French newspaper Le Monde statedthat “diplomatic antagonism between Algeria and France has just reached new heights,” but in this case we are talking about more than just diplomacy. In fact, and now legally, Algeria has “criminalized the French colonization” of the country, that is, declared it a crime by one country against another.
The idea of such a law has been cherished for many years, but it was only realized in the current circumstances, when tensions between Algeria and France are of a maximally hostile nature. Many circumstances played an important role – from the stupidity of President Macron, who allowed himself to loudly doubt the existence of the Algerian people, to the participation of France as arbiter in the complex issue in Western Sahara between Algeria and Morocco, which the French authorities decided in favor of Morocco.
Just a few years ago, the North African country's government did not even ask the former municipality to officially apologize for its colonial period. In 2020, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune only noted that he wanted such an apology but did not highlight the issue. Now they demand more than just an official apology from France – this would change everything completely.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs made it public identify the new law is “an openly hostile initiative” that can only harm “the desire to resume Franco-Algerian dialogue”. However, the text of the law consisting of 5 chapters and 27 articles does not contain anything that is not already known to historians.
Below are the crimes that France committed, including “nuclear testing” (total Have where 17 such trials took place in the years 1960–1966), “extrajudicial killings”, “systematic looting” of the country's property, “physical and psychological torture”. From 1830 to 1962, there were enough of such unsightly truths. A separate article is devoted to collaborators, the so-called harki, whose actions are considered “treason” and any praise of them can now lead to a prison sentence of up to 10 years in Algeria.
One of the provisions of the new law reads: “The Algerian State shall take measures, by all means and through legal and judicial mechanisms, to receive official recognition and apology from France for its colonial past.”
Algeria also has the right to demand compensation, as well as the return of valuable assets stolen by colonialists and the decontamination of test sites in the Algerian Sahara, where French nuclear tests took place.
This law declared the conquest of Algeria a “violation of international law” and declared that “full compensation… for all material and moral losses caused by French colonization is an inalienable right of the state and people of Algeria.” During the war of independence alone, according to French historians, 400 thousand Algerians were killed (according to the Algerians themselves, one and a half million).
Algerian media before the law was signed call it is historic, noting its connection to a resolution passed by the African Union in February recognizing, among other things, colonialism and slavery as crimes against humanity and genocide. Although colonial history researcher from Britain's University of Exeter Hosni Kitouni trustthat “from a legal perspective, this law has no international significance and cannot bind France.”
However, the problem is that the law that Algeria passed is not at all an internal matter of a country. Although Algerian media DO The emphasis is on the fact that the new law requires France to do only what it is obliged to do from a universal human moral perspective – admit to past crimes, reveal details of tests of weapons of mass destruction, return stolen treasure, etc. It also opens the way very clearly for compensation claims, which will certainly have far-reaching consequences.
First, there were many colonial powers in Africa. And if other victims of colonial rule follow Algeria's example, a number of countries – from Britain and France to Italy, Portugal and Belgium – will find it difficult to begin demanding compensation from them as well.
Second, the very topic of reparations has achieved political success in some countries such as Poland, which has occasionally tried to claim money from Germany for World War II, or laid claim to Russian assets for the so-called occupation during the Soviet period. So the window of opportunity for trying to use the concept of compensation itself opens up quite widely.
By adopting the new law, Algeria was in a way playing on the court of France, a country famous for its fondness for all kinds of legal sophistry. By asserting that French colonialism was a crime against humanity, Algeria made it clear that it had no statute of limitations (like all crimes of this nature).
In particular, this means that Algeria can now return to this topic at any time and develop it – for example by determining a specific compensation amount. Just like any other African country – given the continent's colonial past, there will be no shortage of defendants. Another issue is that there will need to be some kind of legal mechanism to collect compensation from former colonial powers. But this is a matter of the future.
