New Caledonia remains a tinder box. Local divisions run deep between primarily European loyalist and mainly indigenous independence parties after a contested independence referendum in 2021 led to a standoff, which last year in May erupted into six months of violence.
Enter Manuel Valls. The former French prime minister and now France’s Overseas Territories Minister is in New Caledonia this week in an effort to advance talks on an agreement about the territory’s future. Local elections are planned for November and the prospect of tensions easing appears remote.
Independence supporters were incensed in May last year when France, supported by the loyalists, unilaterally imposed changes to provisions confining voter eligibility in local elections to longstanding residents. Months of destruction and intimidation have heightened sensitivity and fear on both sides.
In December, independence parties suffered a major defeat when a loyalist party precipitated the fall of the local government, which had been the first independence-party-dominated government in 20 years. A small “non-aligned” party switched from backing the independence parties, giving loyalists a lead. This has aggravated independence party hostility.
Troubles in France don’t help, with the snap election mid-2024 resulting in no clear majority and ongoing uncertainty.
Valls is the eighth Overseas France Minister since Emmanuel Macron became president in 2017. Valls was appointed by Francois Bayrou, himself the sixth prime minister to serve under Macron, and a compromise nominee under pressure from France’s divided National Assembly.
Unlike his predecessors, Valls has long experience of the New Caledonia portfolio, which he personally engaged with as prime minister under the Hollande socialist presidency from 2014 to 2016. He has listed New Caledonia among his top priorities. He says the aim of his visit is to re-start discussions about the future to prepare for November local elections, and to maintain peace.
Despite his experience, Valls has a difficult job. He has started with a more conciliatory approach than that of his predecessors, who were prepared to impose the change to voter eligibility, a core compromise between the two local sides, with disastrous results. Rather, he says France will always be there for New Caledonia, and certainly France has advanced large sums for reconstruction and to prop up the economy after the 2024 protests. He says voter eligibility can be looked at as part of a broader reform, a position advocated by one of the independence parties.
Interviewed by Le Monde on 12 February ahead of his visit, Valls controversially spoke not just about shared sovereignty, which New Caledonia effectively already enjoys, but about the Noumea Accord’s reference to “full and complete sovereignty”, and the completion of the decolonisation process. (The Preamble refers to “sovereignty shared with France on the path to full sovereignty”.) Valls noted these provisions were reflected in the French Constitution, which was amended to accommodate significant Noumea Accord compromises (including selective voting eligibility provisions).
By visiting New Caledonia for talks, Valls appears to have made a gesture to independence parties’ demands that discussion about the future should take place in Noumea, not Paris.
A hardline loyalist French MP immediately rejected Valls’ position. Loyalist parties, at a large meeting of supporters in Noumea on 19 February, categorically rejected Valls’ comments on full sovereignty, maintaining their position of New Caledonia remaining within France and “pas de cadeaux” (“no concessions”) to independence parties.
Although the independence parties are divided, they welcome Valls’ references to the Noumea Accord as the basis for the future, and his framing of sovereignty and the process of decolonisation. By visiting New Caledonia for talks, Valls appears to have made a gesture to their demands that discussion about the future should take place in Noumea, not Paris.
Still, the hardline independence coalition FLNKS remains strongly committed to attaining full sovereignty, calling for another independence vote with UN engagement, the freeing of their leader Christian Tein who is in jail in France for inciting the 2024 violence, and his participation in discussions. It continues to reject trilateral discussions (i.e. with both France and loyalist parties), insisting on bilateral negotiations with France. The moderate independence parties, who have suspended their participation in the FLNKS independence coalition, have said they are prepared to participate in discussions.
Valls must walk a fine line between appearing to favour neither group. Yet he must also address the loyalists’ deep fears and insecurity, particularly after the recent violence, and independence party grievances that France has ridden roughshod over Noumea Accord commitments. Whether he can pull it off will be determined by the readiness of all the local parties to put the unrest of 2024 and their considerable differences behind them and return to serious negotiation, at this stage not a given.
