The 2019 agreements on fisheries and agriculture were concluded in “disregard of the principles of self-determination” of the Sahrawi people, the European high court ruled.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) ruled on Friday, October 4, in favor of the Sahrawi independence activists of the Polisario Front by definitively invalidating two trade agreements concluded between Morocco and the EU. These 2019 agreements on fisheries and agriculture were concluded in “disregard of the principles of self-determination” of the Sahrawi people, the high court established in Luxembourg ruled in a judgment.
The consent of the Sahrawi people to the conclusion of these agreements was one of the conditions of their validity. However, the court ruled that even if consultations had been conducted in Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that had come almost entirely under Moroccan control, they did not constitute consent.
An unresolved postcolonial status
Consent could have been retained if the application of these agreements had given “a precise, concrete and substantial advantage”, which was not the case, according to the court. Consequently, the requests for annulment of a decision of the European Court of Justice taken at first instance, in 2021, are rejected. At the time, the EU court had annulled the two EU-Morocco trade agreements.
The court’s decision on Friday, however, has no short-term consequences. The fisheries agreement had already expired in July 2023 and the CJEU extended the application of the agreement concerning agricultural products by one year from Friday.
In a separate ruling, the EU Court of Justice also ruled that the labeling of melons and tomatoes harvested in Western Sahara must mention that territory and not Morocco as the country of origin.
The Confédération Paysanne, a French agricultural union, had asked France to ban the import of melons and tomatoes from the territory of Western Sahara, wrongly labeled as coming from Morocco. The court ruled in its favor, ruling that the country of origin was Western Sahara and not Morocco.
A vast desert expanse of 266,000 square kilometers located north of Mauritania, Western Sahara is the last territory on the African continent whose postcolonial status has not been settled: Morocco controls more than 80% in the west, the Polisario Front less than 20% in the east, the whole being separated by a sand wall and a buffer zone under the control of UN peacekeepers.
At the end of 2020, Donald Trump’s United States recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the former Spanish colony, breaking the international consensus on the current status of the disputed territory.
