French minister back in New Caledonia to work on territory's future status

France's Interior and Overseas Minister, Gerald Darmanin, has returned to New Caledonia to resume talks on the Pacific territory's future status after it voted to remain French in a third and final referendum at the end of 2021. However, the pro-independence FLNKS movement refuses to recognise the result. 

French Interior and Overseas Minister Gerald Darmanin in Mont-Dore, New Caledonia, on December 3, 2022. AFP - NICOLAS PETIT

Darmanin is in New Caledonia from 3-5 March to continue talks begun in late December.

In three referendums held between 2018 and 2021, a majority of New Caledonians rejected full sovereignty.

Under the 1998 Nouméa Accord – which laid out the process for decolonisation – a fresh statute now has to be drawn up.

A key issue is voting rights, which are restricted to indigenous Kanaks and people who have been residents in the territory since 1998.

Pro-French parties want the new statute to open up electoral rolls to the more than 40,000 French residents who are currently excluded.

Election observers attend the counting of ballots after a referendum vote in Noumea, New Caledonia, Sunday Dec.12, 2021. AP - Clotilde Richalet

Pro-independence parties, united under the FLNKS movement, are opposed to changing the rules.

FLNKS congress

FLNKS, a signatory to the Noumea Accord, boycotted the third and last referendum after France refused to postpone it to 2022.

Held in December 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, FLNKS described it as an affront and a humiliation of the indigenous Kanak people, claiming the pandemic had had a disproportionate impact on them.

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Darmanin agreed to hold off bilateral discussions with the FLNKS movement until after it had held its congress last weekend in Noumea.

The movement proclaimed its unity, although a senior member of the Caledonian Union, Dominique Fochi, told local media there were divergent proposals from the different parties.

No further vote

Gerald Darmanin's predecessor, Christophe Castaner, had planned a referendum on a new statute by June this year.

But faced with a political impasse and the absence of meaningful discussions, the undertaking was dropped. 

Darmanin told the French National Assembly in December that there would be no further vote on the issue during the five years of President Emmanuel Macron's second term in office.

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