French justice reaffirms the legality of the agricultural agreement between Morocco and the EU
A new legal setback for the associations linked to the Polisario Front and their attempts to block the agricultural agreement between Morocco and the European Union. The Court of the French city of Tarascon has ruled against the Confédération Paysanne, a French trade union organisation that sought to ban the French company IDYL from marketing fruit and vegetables from all the provinces of Morocco, including those in the south. The union also sought to take IDYL to court and receive compensation for the alleged "damages" it suffered.
According to Al-Arab, the persons who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the French union are linked to the Polisario Front. The union is also backed by French politicians who support the separatist militia. "The activist José Bové, one of the founders, is a great supporter of the Polisario", Muhammad Mamouni Allawi points out in the Arabic-language media.
The French court's ruling comes shortly after the London court rejected an application by an Algerian-linked NGO seeking to invalidate the association agreement between Morocco and the UK. Rabat and London signed such a document in October 2019 after Brexit and have since expanded bilateral cooperation on a number of issues.
The French and English court rulings have been celebrated in Morocco, where they are seen as a "triumph" against the Polisario and Algeria. "Morocco has sovereignty over its lands and the southern regions are part of the territorial integrity of the Kingdom, and this was decided by the French court in Tarascon against the French organisation linked to the Polisario and Algeria," Khaled Cherkaoui Al-Samouni, director of the Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Rabat, told The Arab Weekly. "International law confirms that the southern provinces are not separate from Morocco, and that all decisions and agreements cover the whole of Moroccan territory," he adds.
On the other hand, the president of the Moroccan Confederation of Agriculture and Rural Development (COMADER), Rachid Benali, considers that the French ruling "strengthens the position of the Kingdom and consolidates the confidence of its partners", according to the Moroccan news agency MAP.
Benali, who considers this ruling as "another blow" for the enemies of Morocco, stresses that the ruling of the Tarascon Court "confirms" that Moroccan territory extends "from Tangier to Lagouira". "We, the farmers, are all united behind His Majesty King Mohammed VI, and we will continue our fight against the enemies. The truth will triumph in the end," concludes the COMADER president.
In a similar vein, Azzeddine Hanoune, professor of public law at the Ibn Tofaïl University, describes the court ruling in Le Matin as "a blow to the tactics of the Polisario and its supporters". However, Hanoune recalls that such mechanisms have worked in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
In the face of their failures in the tribunals, the Polisario and its partners have also launched false accusations with the aim of obstructing the fisheries agreement between Rabat and Brussels which expires next July and from which European countries, especially Spain, benefit.