Camus himself identified free trade as an instrument of peace and prosperity within Europe and believed that Algeria would thrive in the context of a pan-European market. It is on such news that we shall now focus. Mercantile deals may strike readers as an elliptic target in this context.
In an era of generally low trade barriers, such arrangements may seem unremarkable, but they produce dramatic distributive consequences and therefore need unwavering attention. Recent empirical studies concerning EU association agreements with eastern neighboring countries have pointed out that trade liberalization, even when it generates wealth in the aggregate, may worsen the plague of spatial disparity and deepen existing cleavages in already dysfunctional societies.
In the process of putting together the puzzle of North-South relations, this is a piece we should not lose sight of. The risks and sacrifices that so many Algerian migrants face in Europe give us a sense of the misery they leave behind when they embark on their journey of hope.
High rates of unemployment, combined with lack of faith in the ruling class, generate massive emigration fluxes. There is a significant discrepancy between the image of a destitute land, which migrants eagerly flee, and the relatively solid portrait of Algeria that emerges from aggregate data. High-energy prices in the early s generated extra revenue, which allowed the Algerian government to repay its foreign debt and increase its geopolitical importance.
According to a recent economic profile,. Algeria has the 10th-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and is the sixth-largest gas exporter. It ranks 16th in oil reserves. Moreover, the country was notably not shaken by the Arab Spring and has been relatively stable for the past decade. Wealth and relative stability, however, have not borne sufficient fruit in many pockets of Algerian society. The point is that the cash flow generated by hydrocarbons comes with two significant drawbacks.
