In reaction to the vote of the European Parliament’s resolution sanctioning it for letting underage migrants en masse enter Ceuta on May 17 and 18, Morocco is threatening to break bilateral agreements with the European Union (EU), in particular the agreements of peach.
The crisis between Morocco and Spain could intensify with the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on an appeal by the Polisario Front concerning the fishing agreement which includes the waters of the Sahara. Thursday, many Moroccan Internet users reacted on social networks, asking for the “non-renewal of the fishing agreement with Spain”, reports El Espanol. The fisheries agreement between the EU and Morocco, signed for more than 30 years and which has been the subject of regular renewals until 2019, allows EU fishermen to exercise their activity in waters outside of the EU by paying an access fee. A suspension of these agreements would directly affect Spain, whose fishermen constitute the majority of the fleet.
With the signing in 2000 of the Association Agreement, and the adoption five years later, of the European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan, Morocco has become a privileged partner of Europe in the fight against illegal immigration and terrorism. The establishment of the EU-Morocco summit has strengthened these relations at the political level.
In a resolution against Morocco, voted on Thursday in Strasbourg by the four main groups of the European Parliament (popular, socialist, liberal, and green) with 397 votes in favor, 85 against, 196 abstentions, the EU condemned the “unjustifiable” attitude of the kingdom which in May caused an unprecedented migratory crisis by allowing thousands of migrants to enter Ceuta. In its resolution, the EU maintains that “the worsening of the political and diplomatic crisis must not call into question the good-neighborly, strategic, multidimensional and privileged relations between Morocco and the EU and Spain”.
Morocco’s reaction was not long in coming. “The resolution of the European Parliament does not change the political character of the crisis between Morocco and Spain”, indicated Morocco in a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, specifying that “the instrumentalization of the European Parliament in this crisis is counterproductive”. The day before the vote on the resolution, Nasser Bourita, Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs, had already accused the Spanish government of “Europeanizing” the “bilateral crisis between Spain and Morocco”. For the head of Moroccan diplomacy, beyond the Ghali affair, there is “something deeper. A loss of confidence”.
