APS : Saturday, 04 February 2017
PARIS- The high official for the Algerian-French Industrial and Technological Cooperation Jean-Louis Levet said Saturday, in Paris, that the role of Paris-Algiers axis should be as structuring as that of Paris-Berlin,
underlining that the duo Paris-Algiers is “at the heart of Europe-Africa interface.”
“Generally speaking, at the strategic level, we can say that the duo Paris-Algiers is at the heart of Europe-Africa interface. Algeria is at the heart of North African with very important countries such as Morocco and Tunisia. For a country like France, the role of Paris-Algiers axis should be as structuring as Paris-Berlin’s,” said in a long interview to the newspaper La Tribune.
This economist said that since he was appointed in 2013, his mission consists in saying “We should speed up the transition, between France and Algeria, from a mode of relations based on trade to a mode of relations based on partnerships determining the economic and social development,” as part of the “Declaration of Cooperation and Friendship” signed in December 2012 in Algiers by the two President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and François Hollande.
For him, on the world scene of the nation-States, there is today no equivalent, at the economic and strategic levels, to France-Algeria duo, notably concerning the geographical, linguistic, cultural proximity.
In terms of cooperation with Algeria, Jean-Louis Levet affirmed that “we need to work on the long term, because the global competition urges us to be present on the fundamentals of development of a country.”
“That is what allows us, we the French, to differentiate from our competitors, notably the Asians and Americans, very interested in the Algerian markets of digital and agriculture,” he said.
