PARIS – President Emmanuel Macron of France announced on Tuesday that the declassification of secret archives over 50 years old would be accelerated, a move that will facilitate access to documents related to the Algerian War – a controversial chapter in the history of France that authorities have long been reluctant to face.
A statement from the Elysee Palace said that as of Wednesday, a new rule “would significantly reduce the time needed for the disqualification procedure” in order to “encourage respect for historical truth”.
Mr. Macron recently took a series of measures to lift the veil over France’s colonial history in Algeria, a lasting trauma that continues to shape modern France. The change announced on Tuesday was intended to respond to growing complaints from historians and archivists about strict government instructions to declassify files.
According to the new rules, the authorities will be able to declassify the archive boxes at once, speeding up the process of declassifying secret documents that have been carried out page by page.
Some historians, however, claim that the new rules barely meet their complaints.
“This will only speed up the pace of a procedure that shouldn’t have existed,” said Raphaëlle Branche, an Algerian War historian.
At the heart of historians’ complaints is the government’s 2011 requirement that any document classified as “secret” or “top secret” be formally declassified before it is made public. This contradicts a 2008 law that requires the immediate release of secret documents 50 years after they were produced.
The 2011 statement has been loosely applied, or even ignored, by archivists in recent years. But the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security, a powerful unit within the prime minister’s office, began enforcing the rules last year.
Tens of thousands of documents that were previously public were subsequently sealed, preventing historical research and re-imposing confidentiality on information that had previously been revealed.
A group of archivists and historians, including Robert O. Paxton, an American historian who revealed the French authorities’ collaboration with Nazi Germany, challenged the 2011 demand before the French Supreme Court.
Ms. Branche, who is leading the legal fight, said the group would continue its challenge despite Macron’s announcement on Tuesday.
It is unclear what motivated the effort to apply the declassification policy last year. But Macron’s desire to pull the curtain on the Algerian War has irritated some penalties in the armed forces, which oversee most defense-related files.
Fabrice Riceputi, Algerian War historian, said the declassification policy has led to some absurd situations.
He cited a visit to the National Archives of France in 2019, when he read a secret 1957 document detailing the use of torture by French forces during the Algerian War, which was made public a decade ago under the 2008 law.
In fact, the report was anything but secret, as it had first been revealed in a 1962 book and later cited in several historical studies in the 1990s.
But Bruno Ricard, head of the National Archives, said the report has now been classified again – according to government instructions.
In January, Mr. Macron received a report on the Algerian War which advised ending the page-by-page declassification process, but also returning “as soon as possible” to declassify any secret document older than 50, as required by the the 2008 law.
In its statement, the Elysee Palace said the government would try to reconcile the 2011 instruction and the 2008 law through legislation until the summer.
“It is a matter of coordination between different legal regimes,” said Ricard in a recent interview, while carefully leafing through the pages of a (declassified) file by Maurice Audin, a mathematician who was tortured to death by the French army in Algeria in 1957.
The documents on Audin are part of about 100 files released in 2019 and 2020 after Macron called for the opening of all files dealing with people who disappeared during the war.
But historians say many documents remained unavailable because of the 2011 statement.
Mrs. Branche, who wrote extensively on the use of torture by French forces, said that many of her books would not be publishable today because they are based on documents that have been resealed.
Since she started teaching at Paris Nanterre University in 2019, about 10 of her students have had to change their research topics because of the lack of access to important documents, she said.
“There are some studies that are no longer imaginable,” said Branche.
The Algerian War remains a deep wound in France that nourishes bitter feelings among millions of residents with ties to Algeria, from immigrant families to war veterans. Questioning this past has proved to be a difficult task.
Macron’s official acknowledgment last week that France had “tortured and murdered” a major Algerian independence fighter in 1957 was widely criticized by the French right.
But almost 60 years after the end of the war, the question of France’s colonial past may never have been more urgent, underlying a racial awakening by immigrants in the country and fueling heated debates about the country’s integration model.
Riceputi, the historian, launched in 2018 a website with hundreds of names of people missing during the war, based on archival searches he managed to do before the new instructions were applied.
In just a few weeks, he said, he received a torrent of testimonies from Algerian families, which allowed him to document more than 300 cases.
“It wouldn’t stop,” he said.