Raised against the commercial treaty concluded between Brussels and Rabat, the Polisario Front of Western Sahara denounced a “plunder” of its resources, “a theft of goods to finance the annexation policy” by Morocco. A hearing scheduled over two days has opened in the EU court.
The Western Sahara issue returns to European justice … The separatists of the Polisario Front have again challenged in court the trade treaty signed between the European Union and Morocco, which allows the latter to export agricultural products from the former Spanish colony. A hearing scheduled over two days has opened before the EU court in Luxembourg. New episode in a long diplomatic-economic-judicial soap opera, it focused on Tuesday on the preferential customs tariffs granted to products from Western Sahara imported into the European market.
Vast desert area of 266,000 km2 located in the north of Mauritania, Western Sahara is the last territory of the African continent whose post-colonial status is not settled: Morocco controls more than 80% in the west, the Front Polisario less than 20% to the east, the whole being separated by a wall of sand 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.
Through the voice of its lawyer, Me Gilles Devers, the Polisario again denounced Tuesday a “plunder” of its resources, “a theft of goods to finance the policy of annexation” of Western Sahara by Rabat. “Take care of your own business. Leave us alone”, launched Me Devers before the European judges. For us, the problem had “been solved”, he assured. At the end of 2016, the Polisario won a round when the EU Court of Justice ruled that the free trade agreement between Morocco and its main trading partner, the EU, could not apply to Western Sahara.
Since then, according to Me Devers, the European Parliament has circumvented this opinion by adopting in January 2019 a text extending to the disputed territory the preferential customs tariffs granted by an agreement signed in 2012 between the EU and Morocco. During this new hearing, the Council of the European Union (body representing the 27 member countries), France, the European Commission and the Moroccan Confederation of Agriculture and Rural Development (Comader) contested the admissibility of the appeal brought. by the Polisario.
“The applicant is not a legal person with legal capacity,” said Vincent Piessevaux on behalf of the Council of the EU. “He was never recognized as an interlocutor of the Union”, pleaded this lawyer. The Polisario Front “is not the sole representative of the Saharawi people”, argued for its part the counsel of the Comader, Me Nathalie Colin. She criticized Me Devers for seeking to obtain that European justice “interferes in a procedure underway before the United Nations” (definition of the status of the former colony, ndr), which “is not its role “. The pleadings must concern until Wednesday several actions for annulment brought by the Polisario. The decisions will be rendered in the coming months.
