Se soluciona el problema de los euro-marroquíes varados por la pandemia

The forgotten ones. This is how more and more networks and media in Morocco these days refer to Moroccan citizens with dual nationality or resident abroad - 80% of them in the European Union - who have been confined to their homeland by the coronavirus crisis. "I have been in Spain for 32 of my 34 years, I have a Spanish passport, my Moroccan documents have a Spanish address, and yet I am not Spanish enough because they have not been able to repatriate me since March 13. I do not understand. I have been absent from my job for a month and a half, which I am afraid I am going to lose, and I am running out of money. And it's not just me, I have my sick mother who depends on me financially and accompanied me to visit my grandfather," laments Atalayar from Rabat Abdel B., a trailer driver who lives in Valencia. Abdel's case is that of the officially hundreds - the real figure must be over several thousand - of naturalised Moroccans from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy or Spain and citizens of the Maghreb country living abroad (the MRE in local terminology; there is a ministry in the government dedicated to them) who have been waiting since mid-March to be able to return to their lives, return to their jobs and be reunited with their loved ones. The headlines these days are taken by the more than 20,000 Moroccans stranded abroad who are waiting for their return home, but the stories of these Euro-Moroccans are marked by identical anguish and drama. The good news is that the operation for their return is already underway. 

"I came at the beginning of March to see my mother with my son and the confinement has kept me stuck here in Rabat ever since. I have been absent from work for more than a month and a half, in a bank in Toulouse, with no pay and not knowing if I will lose my job," explains French-Moroccan Imane Ibourk to Atalayar by telephone from the Moroccan capital. "Today I got a call from the French Consulate: I will be able to return this Friday on a flight to Paris. I am very happy. But don't forget that, considering that I am returning with my mother and son, adding up the plane tickets and the car rental that I will need to get to my city at dawn, it will cost me a thousand euros. And that's not counting the expenses I've had all this time in Morocco," he confesses to this publication. 
 

Despite the fact that since the Moroccan authorities closed their borders definitively in mid-March, thousands of citizens from countries all over the world arrived, in a constant trickle, to leave Morocco, this has not always been the case for the MRE as a whole. Nor has it been the case for Moroccan citizens with French, Dutch, Italian, Belgian or Spanish passports. Their status as Moroccans prevails over that of their other citizenship in their country of origin. In other words, on Moroccan soil these people have been, in theory, subject to the same obligations in terms of restriction of movement as the rest of their compatriots. 

The fear of the authorities of the southern neighbour, aware of the limitations of its health system, of the uncontrolled expansion of the coronavirus epidemic made them opt for an expeditious decision. A seemingly inflexible position that, however, over the weeks has become more subtle and has incurred contradictions and incongruities. One of them is to allow Moroccan citizens resident in Canada or the United States or with passports from these countries who are stranded in their land of origin to leave North African soil, unlike what happened with the Euro-Moroccans. Another, to announce the authorisation of the generalised return of Moroccan citizens with dual nationality on 13 April and that the process is still stuck more than three weeks later. 
 

From Rabat, it is claimed that only 1,300 Moroccans resident in EU states have formally applied to return. But the truth is that only Belgium, in an article collected by the official media Le360, had sent the Moroccan authorities on 28 April a list of more than 1,400 citizens with dual nationality for repatriation. According to the university professor, writer and expert on the reality of Moroccan emigration in Europe, Abdellatif Maroufi, the real number of stranded people who want to return could reach 5,000. The truth is that the exact figure is not known. 

"Morocco lacks a strategy; it is acting on the spur of the moment and needs a plan: it will have no choice but to let these people with dual nationality go sooner or later and to take in its citizens who are now confined abroad, because it will be a disaster for them all if this continues," Maroufi told Atalayar. "I don't see what harm it will do to Morocco if they come back," says the 76-year-old researcher, who has lived in the Netherlands for more than 25 years and today, halfway between the Netherlands and Morocco, continues to be active through associative work in contact with the reality of migration.
 

Fortunately, however, the drama of these people and their families could be nearing its end. In the last few days, several flights have been recorded, and there are more announced with exact dates. Last Friday, 264 Belgian citizens returned to Brussels from Casablanca. The following day, although no figures are required, another plane did the same. Three more flights are expected to leave from Moroccan soil in the course of the week. Two French ships will take citizens with European passports or French residency from Tangiers in the coming weeks to the Provençal port of Sète; there are also several flights scheduled by Air France for a similar purpose. This Thursday an Iberia plane will repatriate from Casablanca another contingent of some 180 citizens: Spanish citizens of origin, naturalized and MRE who are in special circumstances. They will, by the way, assume the cost of the tickets, around 200 euros (as it is also being done in the case of the French, it must be said).

Uncertainty has been the dominant note of the situation all these weeks. "The problem is that we don't know if after this Iberia flight another one will come and if so, when. There are many people suffering a lot: sick people who need to continue being treated in Spain, pregnant mothers and even mothers who have had their children here during this time," a Spanish citizen named M. Ángeles, who was caught by the border closure in Arcila, on the northern coast of the Maghreb country, explained to Atalayar. A civil servant and a lover of Morocco, she returns to Spain this Thursday on the aforementioned Iberia flight. She is clear about who is primarily responsible for the situation: "Morocco has not helped in any way. Perhaps she wants to put pressure on the question of Saharawi waters". Abdel charges the Spanish authorities: "Every time I have called the Consulate they have taken note of me again, it seems as if the data have evaporated. What they told me was to accept it. These are not words of encouragement, but they make me even more distressed. The worst thing is not knowing what will happen, because after this flight on Thursday we don't know if there will be another one. Theoretically, the process of selecting passengers on these flights - not only in the case of Spanish-Moroccan people, but in general - has been done according to personal situations, with priority given to the most precarious cases from the health and social point of view.  

Although the drama of the Euro-Moroccans seems to be on the way to being resolved, the path has not been easy. Most of the complaints and protests have taken place on social networks, where numerous groups and campaigns have been formed to call for help from the Moroccan authorities and the various States involved. Videos with similar stories of desperation abound. The protests have also reached the streets: Moroccans living in Spain and Spanish citizens demonstrated just this Monday in front of the different consular offices in Morocco.
 

The truth is that the negotiations between Rabat and the different capitals have marched at different speeds, as the stories have been different. The happiest has been that of the Moroccans from Canada and the United States, who were able to return home between the end of March and the first half of April. In the aforementioned speech on 23 April, Bourita attacked the Netherlands, describing its authorities as "opportunistic" and "discriminatory" towards naturalised Moroccans living in the country, since, in his opinion, they were only interested in their destination after some thirty tourist flights had already returned. "The Moroccan in his country enjoys all rights and assumes all obligations towards his compatriots. There is no need for protection or guardianship by the embassy of a third country," said the Moroccan foreign minister. On 26 April the Dutch authorities thanked Rabat for its cooperation in announcing the first flight to repatriate their stranded citizens. Another flight from Casablanca is scheduled for Wednesday, which will take care of "urgent cases". According to the Dutch daily De Volkskrant, there are still 2,300 Dutch citizens in the Maghreb country, the largest contingent of Dutch citizens in the world still stranded.

With Belgium, a country that Bourita himself praised in that speech before the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, for "adhering" to the "logic" of the criterion followed by Rabat, things have been less conflictive, although the first repatriation flight took place on May 1. The negotiations for the return of the Franco-Moroccan and Hexagon residents, marked by a context of cold bilateral relations, have not been easy. The Moroccan press pointed directly to the French ambassador in Rabat, Hélène Le Gal, for her distant and unsympathetic nature. To give an example, the daily Maroc Diplomatique devoted an article on 13 April to the top French representative in Morocco entitled "Hélène Le Gal, a French ambassador in need of diplomacy".
 

Coincidentally or not, at the beginning of last month the French Development Agency and Rabat signed two agreements for a total of 250 million euros - destined for the budgetary stabilisation programme, the network of public companies and the town councils of Morocco - which, however, the majority of the media of the Maghreb country are only broadcasting this week. Meanwhile, on 24 April, Air France announced ten flights between Morocco and France from 28 April to 28 May for the return of some 5 000 citizens with French passports. The week of April 20th, ferries left Tangier for Genoa. And in the coming weeks two ships will leave from the old international city for Sète, a port close to the French city of Montpellier. 

As if that were not enough, the community of Moroccans living abroad has been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus epidemic. In France alone, the number of deaths was 147 at the time of writing. On 23 April the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Nasser Bourita, reported to a parliamentary committee 341 deaths of Moroccans abroad. A death toll which, at the time of publication of this text, had already reached 400, according to the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME). To put this in context it is sufficient to say that 181 people have died in Morocco because of the pathogen (the official figure was 5,219 at the time of publication of the text). For example, the Moroccan media were reporting on the tragedy of a young Moroccan Rif man living in the Netherlands. In just a few days he lost his parents and an uncle to COVID-19. In addition, the same information, collected on Monday by the digital bladi.net, noted that seven other family members are in hospital as a result of the infection. 
 

The reality is that remittances sent by members of the Moroccan community living abroad constitute one of the main sources of foreign exchange for the neighbouring country, along with tourists and foreign direct investment. According to data provided by the Secretary General of the CCME, Abdellah Boussouf, to the weekly TelQuel, foreign exchange amounted to no less than 7% of the Moroccan GDP in 2019.  

"Some of our compatriots are totally or partially deprived of income, depending on whether they benefit from measures guaranteeing them a minimum income or not," Boussouf said. "The majority of Moroccans abroad, who are employed in the service sector, tourism, finance, as is the case in the Gulf countries, or who do domestic work, take care of children, as is the case in Europe, will be disadvantaged. Moroccan women are particularly at risk from the consequences of the pandemic," said the CCME Secretary General. In the same interview with TelQuel, Boussouf recalled that 20% of Moroccans abroad come from the southern region of Sus-Masa-Draa, which is why he predicted a particularly negative impact of the crisis on the territory.  
 

According to World Bank data, remittances will fall by 20% worldwide and by 19.6% in the North Africa and Middle East region as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. For our southern neighbour, the combined effect of the border closure on tourism, one of the pillars of the Moroccan economy, and the foreseeable loss of income that Moroccans living abroad will suffer, promises a sharp drop in foreign currency inflows to aggravate a financially delicate situation.