Morocco responds with its fisheries agreement with Russia after latest European court ruling

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) definitively annulled the fisheries and agriculture agreements of the European Union (EU) with Morocco for including Western Sahara without having taken into account the Saharawi population. 

The European Court of Justice understood that in order for the EU to seal an international agreement with Morocco for the exploitation of resources in this region, the consent of the people of Western Sahara was required, an approval that does not exist, according to the European Court.

The fisheries agreement had already been suspended since July 2023 following a ruling by the EU's General Court (GC), and the CJEU ordered its definitive annulment. 

The ruling noted that the pacts reached in 2019 were concluded without the consent of Western Sahara. ‘In 2019, it brought before the General Court a series of actions for annulment of the Council decisions approving those agreements. Finding that the Union and Morocco had concluded agreements applicable to Western Sahara without having obtained the consent of the people of Western Sahara, as a third party to the disputed agreements, the General Court annulled the disputed decisions, while temporarily maintaining their effects,’ the EU court ruling noted.

Shortly afterwards, in contrast to this drift, Morocco extended the mutual fisheries agreement with Russia, which does include the coast of Western Sahara, a territory that the Moroccan kingdom includes in its southern provinces. 

Moroccan diplomatic sources informed the Spanish news agency Europa Press that this agreement with Russia ‘includes the southern provinces’, which shows Moscow's tendency towards recognising the Moroccan nature of the Sahara. 

This provision represents another pronouncement in favour of Morocco's thesis for the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

Morocco proposes a formula of broad autonomy for Western Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty with the plan to develop the area to the maximum in all aspects and grant a broad capacity for self-government to the Saharawis, leaving defence and foreign policy in the hands of the Moroccan state. 

This project has the international backing of major countries such as the United States, France, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Germany and Spain, which consider the Alawite initiative to be the most serious, credible and realistic way of resolving the Sahrawi dispute. 

On the other side is the Polisario Front, with the support of Algeria (Morocco's great political rival in the Maghreb), which proposes holding a referendum on independence for the Sahrawi people to decide their future. This initiative has less support on the international stage.

The CJEU's proposal on the need to consult the Sahrawi population in order to sign trade or economic agreements on Western Sahara may raise problems of legitimacy because 80% of the population is in the so-called southern provinces under Moroccan control and 20% in the refugee camps in Algeria, where conditions are difficult under the iron rule of the Algerian authorities and the Polisario Front. The exact population to be consulted would have to be defined. This could also affect the holding of an independence referendum. 

Morocco wants to protect its territorial integrity, as it considers Western Sahara to be its own territory, and intends to develop the region as much as possible to make it socially and economically prosperous. In this case, by promoting wealth-generating activities, such as all kinds of economic and trade agreements with other countries that involve the territory. 

Now the extension of the fishing agreement with Russia has arrived in this sense, which is ‘promising’, as the North African country has pointed out. It should be noted that a few months ago the fourth session of the Russia-Morocco Joint Fisheries Committee was held in Rabat, during which additional plans for the development of cooperation were discussed. 

Morocco ultimately negotiated a fisheries agreement with Russia that includes the entire Atlantic coast of the Moroccan kingdom, without exception, a condition that Moscow had previously expressed its willingness to accept.