European Union Freezes Fisheries Agreement With Morocco

The European Union has unilaterally decided to stop working on the fisheries agreement that binds it to the Moroccan Makhzen regime, whose deadlines expire on 17 July, in a new escalation that confirms the depth of the rift that has hit relations between Brussels and Rabat since the explosion of the scandal of bribery of European parliamentarians by the Moroccan Makhzen regime, and before that the revelation of a scandal of spying on senior European officials.
And the Europeans decided their matter more than a month before the expiry of the terms of the agreement signed in 2019, not to initiate any negotiations with Morocco to renew the agreement, according to what was reported by the Spanish agency “Europe Press”, as well as the Spanish Minister of Agriculture and Maritime Fisheries, Luis Planas, because of the firm conviction in Brussels that the decision to be taken by the European Court of Appeal, after its appeal, will be in favor of the renewal of this agreement.
The European Court of Justice had, in a preliminary ruling, annulled the Moroccan-European fisheries agreement on the grounds that it included the occupied Sahrawi territories, recognizing that the Moroccan Makhzen regime had no sovereignty over these territories in a jurisprudence that put an end to the falsehood of Moroccan claims, but the European countries preferred to ride their heads and jump on this. verdict, with the argument that it is subject to appeal.
The agreement, which is nearing its end, will enter into force on 19 July 2019, after a one-year hiatus due to the legal dispute between the Moroccan regime and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, in which European justice has ruled three times in favor of the Sahrawi side, but the Europeans, along with the Moroccan regime, took advantage of the procedural dimension, in this case, to buy more time to plunder the Sahrawi people’s fisheries wealth.
The agreement stipulates that the Moroccan Makhzen regime will receive 45 million euros a year from the European Union as compensation for allowing 138 vessels to fish in Moroccan waters, including the occupied Sahrawi coasts, 92 of which are Spanish and the rest European.
In addition to the legal dimension of the case, i.e. the obligatory judicial decision on the illegality of the agreement because it includes the occupied Sahrawi territories, the majority of European countries believe that the agreement has no economic benefit, because the European fishing fleet exceeds 80,000 vessels, while the number of European vessels in Morocco is less than 140, the absolute majority of which are Spanish, which means that the decision was made for political reasons and not for economic considerations, which falls within the framework of favoring the Moroccan Makhzen regime.
The European Commission’s decision not to renew the fisheries agreement comes amid a major political and diplomatic crisis between Brussels and Rabat. In exchange for only 32 objections, and then another decision to prevent Moroccan representatives from entering the European Parliament, before the latest decision came from the European Parliament last Thursday, which warned the perfidious Moroccan Makhzen regime not to interfere in the upcoming European elections.