Morocco Desperately Seeks Ways to Relieve the EU’s Embarrassment
The Moroccan regime is racing against time to reach an agreement with the European Union that would circumvent the European Court of Justice’s ruling of October 2024, which, as is well known, invalidated the fisheries and agricultural products agreement signed between Rabat and Brussels in 2019.
This agreement is being negotiated before the expiration of the one-year grace period granted by the European Court to both parties to arrange their affairs before the ruling enters into force, which is approximately four weeks away.
Following Rabat’s repeated appeals to the European side to circumvent the European Court of Justice’s ruling to renew the agreement despite the European Court’s decision, which ruled the deal illegal because it included Sahrawi territories over which Morocco has no sovereignty, Brussels initiated a proposal to launch negotiations in line with Morocco’s pleas. A date has been set for September 10 by the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the European Commission.
The European Commission aims to find a way out that would allow for the renewal of the fisheries and agriculture agreement with the Moroccan regime, while avoiding a violation of the binding ruling by the European Court of Justice. This is extremely complex, as the court’s ruling is not subject to appeal and leaves no room for circumvention, and rejects the Moroccan regime’s plunder of the Sahrawi people’s wealth and affirms that any product originating in Western Sahara must be labelled as coming from Western Sahara, not from the Kingdom of Morocco. This is an explicit recognition that the Sahrawi territories are under Moroccan occupation.
The proposal originated from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union until the end of 2025. It faces significant obstacles that are difficult to overcome, such as respecting the right of the people of Western Sahara to benefit from its resources, and labelling products exported from Morocco to the European Union that originate in Western Sahara as non-Moroccan, according to the ruling of the European Court of Justice.
The Danish Foreign Ministry document stated that the European Commission’s proposal, which aims to seek compromise solutions with the Moroccan regime without circumventing the European Court of Justice’s ruling, does not waive a key condition of the court’s ruling, particularly the clause stating that “imported agricultural products must be labelled as originating in Western Sahara”, to maintain the current trade relations between the Moroccan regime and the European Union, allowing the flow of Western Sahara products with the same preferential tariffs applied to the Moroccan regime, the European Commission proposes to establish a mechanism aimed at ensuring that the “people of Western Sahara,” as the proposal calls them, benefits from the revenues generated by the export of Sahrawi products. This provision aims to emulate the ruling of the European Court of Justice, which had affirmed that “the consent of the people of Western Sahara to the implementation of the 2019 EU-Morocco trade agreements in the field of fisheries and agricultural products in this non-self-governing territory is a condition for the validity of the decisions approved by the Council on behalf of the European Union.”
The Danish proposal distinguished the “people of Western Sahara” from the Moroccan people because the 2019 consultations between Rabat and Brussels did not address the people of Western Sahara, but rather the population currently present in the desert, regardless of their affiliation with the people of Western Sahara. The Moroccan regime had transferred hundreds of thousands of Moroccans to Western Sahara during the so-called Green March to change the demographic reality of Western Sahara.
