France said on Wednesday it would review a decades-old agreement that makes it easier for Algerian citizens to move to France unless Algeria agrees to take back those who are deported by the French authorities.

Tensions between Paris and Algiers have escalated since last Saturday, when an Algerian citizen who had received an Obligation de Quitter le Territoire Français, an order compelling him to leave French territory, killed one person and injured others in a knife attack in the city of Mulhouse.

France is threatening its former colony Algeria with the cancellation of its special status if the country does not take back Algerians expelled from France, according to Prime Minister François Bayrou on Wednesday.

French Prime Minister, François Bayrou has declared that Paris would reexamine the 1968 migration pact with Algeria. The pact had made it easier for Algerians to settle in France. This follows months of campaigning by hardline anti-immigration Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau,

Algeria said Thursday it “categorically rejects ultimatums and threats”, the Algerian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, after France threatened to cancel a longstanding agreement on free movement.

The already strained relations between Algeria and France escalated this week. French Prime Minister François Bayrou has threatened to cancel a long-standing agreement with Algeria regarding free movement,

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou threatened Wednesday to cancel a longstanding agreement with Algeria on free movement after a deadly knife attack in which the main suspect is a man of Algerian origin.