Human rights activists and legal experts said that including Western Sahara in trade agreements between the European Union (EU) and Morocco is illegal and unfair, representing an ongoing violation of the rulings of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued in October 2024, as well as a breach of the principle that resources from non-self-governing territories cannot be exploited without their people’s consent.
The website Bilaterals.org published an interview with two experts titled “The EU-Morocco Agreement Is Illegal and Unfair,” offering a documented critical analysis of the new framework the European Commission is trying to establish for regulating trade relations with Morocco. This comes after the EU Court of Justice’s October 2024 rulings, which declared the agricultural and fishing agreements invalid because they illegally included Western Sahara.
The interview brought together voices with complementary backgrounds and expertise: Mohamed Ould El Sharif, director of the French-Sahrawi Center for Studies and Documentation, and Jean Tévino, a member of the Basque Agricultural Confederation Union.
The two agreed on a decisive conclusion: The so-called “new arrangement” between the European Union and Morocco “is not a legal solution but rather an exposed attempt to circumvent European case law without meeting its fundamental requirements.” On this point, Ould El Sharif underscored that the European Court of Justice’s ruling was “crystal clear,” noting that “any agreement covering Western Sahara requires explicit consent from the Sahrawi people, legitimately represented by the Polisario Front, and must have a clear legal basis consistent with international law.” He added that “the agreement the European Commission is pushing undermines the authority of European justice and establishes a dangerous crack in the international legal order by attempting to legitimize an occupation whose decolonization process remains incomplete.”
