On 4 October, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) upheld its 2021 decision that declared the sustainable fisheries partnership agreement between the E.U. and Morocco invalid, annulling the deal over Morocco’s political conflict with neighboring Western Sahara.
As a result, the path forward for Morocco and the E.U. to renew the SFPA, which expired in July 2023, becomes murkier.
The deal gave Morocco EUR 52 million (USD 57 million) annually in exchange granting licenses to 128 E.U. fishing vessels for access to the country's lucrative fishing grounds.
The annulled SFPA between the two parties was originally signed in 2019 and granted E.U. fishing vessels access to both Moroccan waters and waters off the contested territory of Western Sahara. Morocco annexed Western Sahara in 1975 after the withdrawal of Spain from the area, claiming ownership of the land and decision-making power on what to do with it. However, the annexation has largely remained unrecognized among many countries around the world, and the Polisario Front, a rebel nationalist liberation group operating in Western Sahara, claims it owns the decision-making power in the territory.
Soon after the SFPA entered into effect, the Polisario Front filed legal action against the deal, claiming it did not have the consent of Western Saharan people. The CJEU agreed, invalidating the deal on 29 September 2021.
The deal ran its four-year course to avoid major economic disruptions.
The European Commission appealed the CJEU’s 2021 decision, but the court has now reaffirmed the validity of its ruling.
“[The deal] regarding fisheries and agricultural products, to which the people of Western Sahara did not consent, were concluded in breach of the principles of self-determination and the relative effect of treaties,” CJEU said. “The consent of the people of Western Sahara to the implementation, in that non-self-governing territory, of the 2019 E.U.-Morocco trade agreements regarding fisheries and agricultural products is a condition for the validity of the decisions by which the European Council approved those agreements on behalf of the European Union.”
The European Commission said it would continue to collaborate with Morocco on trade, despite the setback.
"In close cooperation with Morocco, the E.U. firmly intends to preserve and continue strengthening close relations with Morocco in all areas of the Morocco-E.U. partnership," the E.U. Commission said in the wake of the ruling.
France, one of the countries that benefitted from the previous deal, and which ruled Morocco under a protectorate from 1912 to 1956, declined to comment on the repercussions of the judicial outcome.
"It would not be appropriate for it to comment on a court ruling. In any case, France reaffirms its unfailing commitment to its special partnership with Morocco and its determination to go on deepening it," it said in a press release. "As such, the relationship between the European Union and Morocco is strategic, and France will continue working with its European partners on strengthening their exchanges, especially economic exchanges, and on safeguarding the achievements of the partnership, with due regard for international law."
It is not clear if or when E.U. or Moroccan officials might challenge the latest ruling. One way to do so, according to Morocco World New Co-Founder and Publisher Samir Bennis, is to focus on whether the CJEU actually has jurisdiction in adjudicating the matter.
“The court, to put it simply, lacks jurisdiction over disputes between the E.U. and a non-E.U. state, and intervention in such matters is the preserve of the International Court of Justice,” Bennis said in a recent commentary.
The newest ruling also requires identification and labeling of agricultural products from Western Sahara to clearly state that Western Sahara is “the country of origin of those goods, to the exclusion of any reference to Morocco, so as to avoid misleading consumers as to the true origin of those goods.”
