A last-minute campaign in the February Fisheries Council failed to stop an extension of the controversial EU-Morocco agreement. Only Sweden, Denmark and the UK voted against.
Under that agreement, the European Union has paid Morocco €144 million over the last four years to fish Moroccan waters, primarily by Spanish fleets.
Much of those fisheries are taking place off the coast of Western Sahara, which Morocco occupies since 1975, contrary to UN resolutions. According to the agreement, Morocco’s proceeds from those waters should go to the Western Saharan population, but it has failed to show that such has been the case.
The European Parliament’s legal experts found the agreement in violation of international law a year ago, and recently a group of Sweden’s leading international law experts came to the same conclusion.
According to European Voice, Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki had wanted to scrap the agreement altogether until Morocco has presented proof that the people of Western Sahara would benefit from it, but was overruled by her colleagues in the Commission.
In the Council, Spain had led a campaign to prolong the existing contract one year, in order to “avoid a legal vacuum”.
Coreper, the assembly of the member nations’ EU ambassadors, voted along that line on the preceding Friday, but Sweden was reported to still have some hope to muster support from enough nations to alter the decision when it was up for a vote among the ministers on Monday, the primary prospects for a swing said to be the Netherlands and Austria.
The effort failed however, and the Swedish minister Eskil Erlandsson expressed strong disappointment with the decision, calling it “a perfect case of breech of international law”.
Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom voted against the proposal, while Germany and Finland abstained.
The present agreement between the EU and Morocco will expire on 28 February, and Monday’s Council decision will mean a one-year extension, while providing the Commission with a mandate to negotiate a new agreement during that time. The Commission has said that it needs some time to “analyse” the consequences for Western Sahara.
Erlandsson told the Swedish News Agency that he hoped that the agreement would be scrapped by the Council and/or the European Parliament when the negotiations have resulted in a final proposal.