European Parliament Says No Review of Morocco Fisheries Agreement

Review supporters say current agreement disenfranchises indigenous people

The European Parliament voted on Thursday not to let the European Court of Justice (ECJ) review a highly controversial fisheries agreement between the EU and Morocco.

Seventy-seven European members of Parliament (MEP’s) initiated ECJ referral to stop the renewal of an ongoing agreement, which the Parliament’s own special rapporteur considered not only a waste of taxpayer money, but harmful to the environment and the people of the Morocco-occupied Western Sahara.

Those in favor of an ECJ ruling also said it would ascertain if the agreement was wanted and in the best interest of local populations, and whether it is in line with international law.

With a clear show of divisiveness on the issue, Parliament voted 302 to 221 with 30 abstentions, to reject the bid to refer the agreement to the ECJ.

Colonial history

To understand the controversy at the heart of this issue, one must go back to 1975 when Spain withdrew from its colonies in northwest Africa. The area then known as the Spanish Sahara, populated by the Sahrawi people, was invaded by neighboring Morocco and Mauritania.

Ever since, the Sahrawi have tried to gain independence, and although more than 100 U.N. resolutions over the years have called for their self-determination, Morocco blocks this development wanting to integrate Western Sahara into its own territory.

The Sahrawi now live divided in the Moroccan-controlled area on the coast and in the area inlands controlled by the Sahrawi liberation front, POLISARIO. About 165,000 also live in permanent refugee camps in Algeria, completely dependent on humanitarian aid since the 1975 invasion.

Morocco keeps a tight lid on any nationalistic expressions of the Sahrawi, and over the past 40 years, human rights abuses such as torture and disappearances have been documented. Western Sahara is also rich in natural resources, which have been utilized by Morocco ever since the invasion. The rich fishing waters off the Atlantic coast is one of these resources.

Even though more than 80 states have recognized Western Sahara, many still do business with Morocco in a way that the Sahrawi say are detrimental to them.

The EU has a special relationship with Morocco, which is a close neighbor to the union, and its fisheries agreement is a part of that relationship. The deal, which gives the Moroccan government some 36 million euros (US$49 million) a year in exchange for 119 fishing permits for EU vessels, has been sharply criticized for allowing fishing off the coast of the contested Western Saharan region.

“The Sahrawi people do not benefit from this agreement, signed between Morocco and the European Union. Regrettably, the agreement instead intensifies the Moroccan repression against the Sahrawi people,” a Sahrawi rights activist Aminatou Haidar said on a video on YouTube.

Catalan MEP Raul Romeva, who was one of the initiates of the referral to the ECJ, is even more outspoken in his criticism, calling the agreement “neo-colonialism, allowing Europe to pillage the African coast.” In an article on the Public Service Europe website, he is critical of most bilateral fisheries agreements between the EU and developing countries, but calls the one with Morocco “the most odious of them all,” exactly because of the West Saharan issue. He said that the deal needs to be renegotiated so that current EU fishing in Western Saharan waters stops.

Even the European Parliament’s own special rapporteur, Carl Haglund, strongly advised against continuing the agreement in its current form, in his report from Sept. 20.

“There are no reasons for the Parliament to give its consent on the extension of a Protocol to an Agreement that is a waste of taxpayers' money, ecologically and environmentally unsustainable and that has no significant macro-economic effect on either the EU or Morocco,” he writes in his report, where he also outlines how the agreement has not led to any of the benefits hoped for.

The utilization of the fishing rights have been so low that the deal has only given the EU 0.65 euro back for every euro spent, and little or no positive effects on the Moroccan fishing sector has been identified. Furthermore, many of the species fished that were supposed to be protected have in fact turned out to be overexploited, some to the point of depletion, among several adverse environmental effects.

With the possible legal obstacle of an ECJ review removed by today’s vote, the renewal of the protocol will now be voted on by Parliament in December. By then, due to delays within the EU process, 85 percent of the duration of the protocol will already have passed.