Rabat’s Fears After Appointing the New French Foreign Minister
A state of fear and apprehension prevails among the pillars of the Moroccan regime, as a result of French President Emmanuel Macron’s appointment of the “Renaissance” Secretary-General, Stéphane Séjourné, as Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs, in the new government of Gabriel Attal, succeeding the former Minister, Catherine Colonna, and behind these fears, there’s the possibility of the new minister giving priority to his country’s relations with Algeria at the expense of its rival, the Kingdom of Morocco.
The political and media elites close to the Moroccan regime believe that the new French Foreign Minister rises to a level that goes beyond rivalry to the level of hostility, which has made these circles fear a new setback in relations between Rabat and Paris that will return to square one when the French President reached confirmations about his mobile phone being spied on by Moroccan intelligence, using the “Pegasus” spyware that was developed by the Zionist company “NSO.”
The Moroccan regime accuses Stéphane Séjourné of being one of the main perpetrators of the stormy diplomatic crisis that struck diplomatic relations between Rabat and Paris about two years ago, and they hold him responsible for the decisions taken by the European Parliament against Morocco, after the outbreak of the “Morocco Gate” scandal, which, as is known, accuses Morocco for buying off MEPs in exchange for whitewashing the Kingdom’s image and preventing the issuance of decisions and regulations against it from Brussels, defending the Moroccan thesis in Western Sahara, and harming Algerian interests as well.
Behind this accusation, a well-known political figure, the former minister in the Moroccan government and head of the joint parliamentary committee between Morocco and the European Union, Lahcen Haddad, who previously described “Séjourné” as “part of the deep state in France”, following the issuance of the European Parliament’s regulations against the Alawi kingdom.
Before Séjourné became French Foreign Minister, he was head of the group of MEPs of the President’s Renaissance party in the European Parliament. Therefore, the Moroccan regime accuses the new Foreign Minister of being behind the contempt campaign carried out by the European Parliament against the Moroccan regime, by issuing many regulations that Rabat criticizes, similar to the one issued in January 2023, which strongly criticized the deteriorating human rights situation, the imprisonment of journalists, and the restrictions on freedom of expression in Morocco. It also issued another regulation preventing Moroccan representatives from approaching the headquarters of the European Parliament, as well as preventing European representatives from visiting Moroccan soil.
These regulations were based on the Moroccan regime’s detention of journalists and human rights activists thus violating international law, by fabricating imaginary charges, and with unimaginable criminal penalties, such as sentencing journalist Taoufik Bouachrine to 15 years in prison, journalist Omar Radi to six years in prison, and Soulaimane Raissouni to five years in prison, in addition to the imprisonment of the dean of Moroccan jurists and lawyers, Mohamad Zayan, who is over eighty years old.
Since the beginning of the crisis in Moroccan-French relations, the Moroccan elites, known for their closeness to the Moroccan regime, have not stopped accusing the French president of changing the compass of his country’s policy in the Maghreb region towards Algeria. The Francophile and the country’s intellectual in Rabat, Tahar Ben Jelloun, has become famous for this approach and has appeared on more than one French right-wing media platform to warn the “French deep state” against Macron’s continued rapprochement with the Algerian authorities at the expense of relations with Morocco, but this man’s words remained like a shout in a valley.
The Moroccan regime also mobilized its lobbies in France to pressurize Macron, who insulted the Moroccan King, Mohammed VI, in a phone call after the outbreak of the “Pegasus” spyware scandal, as Ben Jelloun said, to limit his drive towards rapprochement with Algeria. The head of the right-wing party “Les Républicains”, Eric Ciotti, visited Moroccan hotels at the government’s expense, to criticize Macron’s policy towards the Western Sahara issue, by refusing to support the “autonomy” plan, despite the Moroccan regime’s repeated courtship.
