The Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) ruled in favor of the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front on Friday October 4 by definitively invalidating two trade agreements concluded between Morocco and the EU. These 2019 agreements on fishing and agriculture were concluded in “lack of understanding of the principles of self-determination” of the Sahrawi people, ruled in a judgment the high court established in Luxembourg.
The consent of the Sahrawi people to the conclusion of these agreements was one of the conditions for their validity. However, the court ruled that even if consultations had been carried out in Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony which had passed almost entirely under Moroccan control, they did not signify consent.
An unresolved postcolonial status
Consent could have been withheld if the application of these agreements had given “a precise, concrete and substantial advantage”which was not the case, according to the court. Consequently, the requests for annulment of a decision of the European justice taken at first instance, in 2021, are rejected. At the time, the EU court annulled the two EU-Morocco trade agreements.
The court’s decision on Friday, however, has no short-term consequences. The fisheries agreement had already expired in July 2023 and the CJEU extended the application of the agreement concerning agricultural products by one year from Friday.
In another ruling, the EU Court of Justice also stipulated that the labeling of melons and tomatoes harvested in Western Sahara must mention this territory and not Morocco as the country of origin.
The Confédération Paysanne, a French agricultural union, had asked France to ban the importation of melons and tomatoes originating from the territory of Western Sahara, wrongly labeled, according to it, as coming from Morocco. The court agreed with him, ruling that the country of origin was indeed Western Sahara and not Morocco.
A vast desert expanse of 266,000 square kilometers located to the north of Mauritania, Western Sahara is the last territory on the African continent whose postcolonial status has not been resolved: Morocco controls more than 80% in the west, the Front Polisario less than 20% to the east, all separated by a wall of sand and a buffer zone under the control of UN peacekeepers.
At the end of 2020, Donald Trump’s United States recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the former Spanish colony, breaking the international consensus on the current status of the disputed territory.