Agriculture and fisheries agreements: Morocco and the EU are within their rights

The Council of the EU and the European Commission had appealed against the decision of the Court of First Instance in the cases concerning the Agriculture and Fisheries Agreements between Morocco and the EU. On Thursday March 21, 2024, Tamara Carpeta, Advocate General of the European Court, delivered her conclusions.

The Opinion of the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) meticulously reviewed recent developments in the appeals lodged by the Council of the EU and the European Commission against the decision of the Court of First Instance concerning the agricultural and fisheries agreements with Morocco.

Prima facie, the Advocate General’s conclusions represent only a first step in the ongoing proceedings. The Court is due to deliver its verdict at the end of this year. In her remarks, Tamara Carpeta highlighted the recommendation to maintain the validity of the agricultural agreement between Morocco and the EU, also emphasizing the implications for the fisheries agreement, notably by underlining Morocco’s aspirations to modernize this partnership.

The Advocate General of the CJEU also rejected the representativeness claims of the “polisario”, an entity not recognized by neither the EU nor the UN as representing the people of Western Sahara, and confirmed the EU’s right to conclude agreements with Morocco covering its southern provinces.

The Advocate General’s rejection of the “polisario’s” claims to representativeness also underlines the need to clarify the legal and political bases surrounding the Western Sahara issue, thereby reinforcing the legitimacy of the agreements concluded by Morocco and confirming its role as the competent authority to deal with the EU on these issues. Therefore, the Polisario has no standing or capacity to conclude agreements.

In addition, the Advocate General recommended that the judgment of the Court of First Instance be set aside and that the agricultural agreement between Morocco and the EU remain valid, thus confirming its legality and validity.
Her recommendations also highlighted the fact that the “polisario” is not recognized as the sole representative of the people of Western Sahara by the United Nations or the European Union, and rejected a request by a pro-polisario association to ban EU imports of agricultural products from the southern provinces, paving the way for continued trade between Morocco and the EU in this area.

Tamara Carpeta’s conclusions thus put an end to the machinations of the Polisario and its sponsors, who are working to distort reality in order to ride on non-existent victories to divert attention from their successive failures at various levels.

The same conclusions also underline the pre-eminence of the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative. In this respect, it states that “since 2018, support for the Autonomy Plan presented by the Kingdom of Morocco in 2007 seems to be growing. She recalled that the vocabulary used in Security Council resolutions seems to have evolved. Since 2018, the wording of Security Council resolutions stresses the need to reach a political, realistic, pragmatic, lasting and mutually acceptable solution to the question of Western Sahara, based on compromise”.

As a reminder, proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union concern Europeans only. Morocco is not a party to this procedure, which is primarily a matter for the Council of the EU. The Council is supported by the European Commission and several member states, which defend the agreements with Morocco.

For Morocco, the European institutions must assume their responsibilities, to protect the partnership with Morocco and defend it against procedural provocations and political maneuvers.