Crémieux Decree

The Crémieux Decree (French: Décret Crémieux; IPA: [kʁemjø]) was a law that granted French citizenship to the majority of the Jewish population in French Algeria (around 35,000), signed by the Government of National Defense on 24 October 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. It was named after French-Jewish lawyer and Minister of Justice Adolphe Crémieux.

The decree automatically made the native Algerian Jews French citizens, while their Muslim Arab and Berber neighbors were excluded and remained under the second-class indigenous status outlined in the code de l'Indigénat. As a result, the decree did not grant citizenship to the Berber Mozabite Jews, who were only granted "common law civil status" and French citizenship in 1961, over ninety years later.

Muslim Algerians could apply individually for French citizenship on paper, but this required that they formally renounce Islam and its laws and their requests were additionally very seldom accepted. That set the scene for deteriorating relations between the Muslim and Jewish communities, with tensions increased by the colonial administration's discrimination between natives and citizens. Seeing a fellow Algerian become a first-class citizen while being left as a second-class citizen made them suspect of collaboration with the colonial authorities as harkis and strongly divided locals.

This eventually proved fateful in the 1954–1962 Algerian War, where suspects of French collaboration were seen as enemies of the revolution and traitors of the people and the nation, after which the vast majority of the Jews of Algeria emigrated to France.