The postponed Spanish-Moroccan summit will be at the end of January or beginning of February

The High Level Meeting (RAN) between Spain and Morocco will be held in Rabat in the last week of January or the first week of February, as announced this Thursday morning in Barcelona by both Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Naser Burita and José Manuel Albares.

The heads of diplomacy of the two countries have held a working breakfast before participating in the Regional Forum of the Union for the Mediterranean (UPM), in which delegations from 43 EU countries and the southern shore of said sea participate .

Albares stressed that this was his seventh meeting with Burita, while the Moroccan minister stressed that he had not visited Spain for three years, before the diplomatic crisis between the two countries began, which peaked in the illegal entry of thousands of Moroccans into Ceuta in May 2021. Precisely the unilateral suspension of the RAN by Morocco in December 2020, a few days before its celebration, was the alarm signal of the deterioration of bilateral relations and their celebration , confirmed now, will mean the staging of his recovery.

Albares and Burita, who have briefly appeared before the press, have highlighted the application of the "road map" agreed during the visit of President Pedro Sánchez to Rabat last April, after Spain changed its traditional position of neutrality in the dispute of the Sahara and aligned with the Moroccan offer of autonomy for the former colony.

Albares has ensured that the roadmap "is being fulfilled point by point" and has cited as examples that irregular immigration has been reduced by 20% and Spanish exports to Morocco have grown by 30%.

He has reiterated that the passage of goods from Ceuta and Melilla will begin in January.

For his part, Burita has assured that "all the commitments" made during Sánchez's visit to Rabat are being fulfilled or will be fulfilled soon and that the RAN will set "more ambitious cooperation objectives" between the two countries.

Asked about the events at the Melilla fence on June 24, in which at least 23 immigrants died, the head of Moroccan diplomacy assured that the cooperation between Madrid and Rabat against illegal immigration is "a model for other countries ”, that that jump to the fence was “violent and organized” and that Morocco has opened an investigation from which “lessons will have to be drawn”.

The last time the High-Level Meeting was held was in 2015. It was unilaterally suspended by Rabat at the last minute in December 2020 and was scheduled to take place this November, but was postponed to early next year to accommodate the agenda of King Mohamed VI.

Just two days ago, this Tuesday, the forum held in Fez by the Alliance of Civilizations, a UN body co-founded by the Spanish Government 17 years ago, was the scene of the new climate of rapprochement between Spain and Morocco after a period of disagreements.

At that meeting, Albares was able to meet with his Moroccan counterpart and assured the Spanish press in the Moroccan city that the Spanish-Moroccan bilateral summit was pending the "overloaded international agendas" of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and King Mohamed VI.

"The (ministerial) working groups are already working: it is a matter of time," added the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

At the beginning of November, Albares also had a surprise meeting with Burita in Paris.

As reported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they had breakfast together taking advantage of their coincidence in the Peace Forum, organized by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Albares and Burita, according to the same sources, then analyzed compliance with the road map agreed between the two countries during the visit that President Pedro Sánchez made to Rabat last April and which put an end to almost a year of diplomatic crisis.