Marruecos renueva su compromiso con España para afrontar la migración

With the aim of discussing migration management, the Moroccan Ambassador to Spain, Karima Benyaich, met on Wednesday with the new Spanish Secretary of State for Migration, Jesús Javier Perea.

During the meeting, the ambassador renewed Morocco's commitment to continue consolidating and deepening cooperation with Spain to address the challenges of migration. The two officials also discussed other issues of common interest. During the meeting, the Moroccan envoy highlighted the means to offer better administrative support to Moroccan students in Spain.

For his part, Perea expressed great satisfaction with the cooperation with Morocco, stressing the need to maintain permanent contact with the Moroccan authorities. Both countries promise to further strengthen their cooperation, not only in migration management, but also on other issues.

In recent years, Morocco's efforts to address migration issues have made international headlines, and Spanish officials have consistently called on the EU to continue to support Rabat's mobilisation.

In November 2020, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said that cooperation between Rabat and Madrid is "distinguished by mutual trust". He also stressed that Spain achieved "significant" success in the fight against undocumented migration and criminal organisations thanks to Morocco's help. He added that the North African country's help in migration management led Spain to halve the number of arrivals of irregular migrants. 

In addition to international assistance, Morocco is also increasing its efforts at the local level to challenge human trafficking networks.

Morocco prevented 9,179 irregular migrants bound for Europe, including 6,162 foreigners, from leaving Morocco in 2020, according to official data from the Directorate General of National Security (DGSN). Similarly, in the same year, the Moroccan police arrested 466 suspects linked to 123 human trafficking networks.