Marruecos y España refuerzan su cooperación en materia migratoria

The meeting between interior ministers in the Kingdom of Morocco has aroused much expectation these days due to the serious migratory crisis that has been unleashed in the Canary Islands. Fernando Grande-Marlaska travelled to Rabat on Friday, where he held a meeting with his Moroccan counterpart, Abdelouafi Laftit, with the aim of strengthening cooperation between the two countries on migration issues.

"Today's meeting once again highlights the extraordinary coordination and loyalty between our respective teams. It is an almost unbeatable relationship", said the Spanish Minister of the Interior.

Grande-Marlaska conveyed to the Moroccan Minister of the Interior the need to increase collaboration in the different areas of migration policy, such as control of flows, exchange of police information and joint operations against criminal organisations that traffic in people.

The great challenge for both countries is to adapt their measures to the coronavirus pandemic, "in these terms we have addressed issues such as terrorism, organised crime, irregular migration and the situation of the Canary Islands. All this by adapting our measures to the circumstances of the pandemic," explained Grande-Marlaska.
 

The minister wanted to focus on the Atlantic route taken by migrants from the Sahara to the Canary Islands. In a statement to the press at the end of the meeting, Grande-Marlaska recalled that the Atlantic route "is a dangerous and difficult route where people are losing their lives".

The two ministers decided to focus on the criminal organisations that organise migrants to cross from one side to the other. "The number of criminal organisations that have been dismantled has reached a significant figure, including the departure of boats with migrants", the minister said.

In this regard, the minister highlighted the good results achieved thanks to the joint policies and actions developed between Spain and Morocco during 2019, which managed to reverse the growing trend of arrivals in 2018 "with a decrease of 50%: 64,298 arrivals in 2018 and 32,513 arrivals in 2019," the Spanish government published in a statement. 

The meeting between Grande-Marlaska and Laftit has influenced two of the key elements in the management of migration policy: real cooperation with the countries of origin and transit and the effective fight against the mafias that traffic people. "Migrants are in a difficult situation and criminal organisations use them to make illegal profits, putting their lives at risk", the Spanish minister pointed out.
 

During his statements to the press, Grande-Marlaska thanked Laftit for his willingness to hold this meeting, "especially given the current crisis situation resulting from the Covid", a pandemic which, he said, is also a major factor in the increase in arrivals in the Canary Islands. 

"There is still strong migratory pressure in North Africa, which is also being borne by Morocco, largely due to the serious instability of many countries on the continent and their low levels of development, in addition to the effects of the pandemic. In order to manage this migratory pressure, joint work and mutual support between Spain and Morocco are essential", said Grande-Marlaska.

This trip to Rabat is the minister's seventh official trip to Morocco since he took over the Ministry of the Interior in June 2018. The visit was part of Grande-Marlaska's international agenda, which focuses on the issue of migration. In recent months, the Spanish minister has visited Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania. 
 

The Spanish Minister of the Interior arrived in Morocco on Friday at the height of the migration crisis in the Canary Islands, where 18,000 illegal immigrants have arrived this year, half of them in the last month alone.

Although the Spanish government does not provide details of the nationalities of the arrivals, it is estimated that half of them are Moroccans, and Marlaska's visit is therefore seen as an attempt to reach an agreement with Rabat on new mechanisms for repatriating its nationals and studying how to strengthen Moroccan control of the Atlantic coasts.

The migratory pressure, which was traditionally concentrated on the coasts of the Straits and the Mediterranean, has shifted to the coasts of southern Morocco and, above all, the Western Sahara, where both the candidates for emigration and the mafias that transport them have moved, according to all the experts.

Inhabitants of the city of Tangier, the usual departure point for emigration, told EFE that sub-Saharans who were concentrated in neighbourhoods such as Boukhalef or Moghogha have disappeared from there and have moved to the Saharan cities of El Aaiún and Dajla in the hope of finding an opportunity to set sail.

The same direction has been taken by the many Moroccans, generally very young (between 15 and 25 years old), who leave their homes in a year when the drought and the economic collapse of the pandemic have combined, especially among the small agricultural workers.

The Moroccan government estimates that the unemployment rate could rise this year by four percentage points to 13 per cent of the population, with a particular impact on young people aged between 15 and 30, who traditionally account for two-thirds of the total unemployed.

The strict confinement measures decreed in Morocco against the coronavirus between April and June led to a drastic decrease in the number of boats leaving for Spain, but when the restrictions were lifted, these departures soared from the summer.

There is one detail that makes migratory control more difficult: the powerful zodiacs are hardly used to sail the sea any more, but the migratory nets prefer the wooden boats used by the fishermen, which can go more unnoticed. The same applies to the cayucos that arrive in the Canaries from Senegal: they are fishing boats that are thrown into the sea with apparent normality.

Grande-Marlaska, has ruled out the idea of transferring migrants from the Canary Islands to the peninsula and has excused it by appealing to the European Union since "migration policies are of the whole EU, and not just Spain".

The minister was thus responding to the request made by the governing partners of the United Nations Podemos, as well as the Canary Islands authorities, to activate these transfers in view of the migratory pressure suffered by the islands, which in the last month alone has led to the entry of more than 9,000 illegal immigrants into the Canary Islands.

Marlaska insisted on several occasions that "migration policy is comprehensive" and includes collaborating with migrants' countries of origin and transit, fighting against the mafias and returning illegal immigrants to their countries.

More meetings between the Kingdom of Morocco and Spain will take place soon. The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, will travel to Rabat on 17 December, where he will co-chair a 'high-level meeting between Morocco and Spain' with his Moroccan counterpart, Saâd Eddine El Othmani.

It remains to be seen whether this meeting will be held due to the difficulties posed by the coronavirus pandemic.