Spain rules out an extension of the fishing agreement with Morocco that expires six days before the elections

Spain rules out an extension of the fishing agreement between the EU and Morocco, and assumes that on July 17, a few weeks after Spain takes the rotating presidency of the Union and just six days before the general elections, the fishing fleet that fishes in Moroccan and Saharan waters will have to return to port indefinitely. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, acknowledged on Monday in Cádiz that, "realistically, it gives the impression that, unfortunately, there will be no opportunity to negotiate a new one" before the current fisheries protocol expires.

Government sources rule out that an extension of the current agreement can be agreed, as happened in 2011, when Morocco and the European Commission agreed to extend its validity for one year, until February 2012. However, in November 2011, the European Parliament rejected the extension, prompting Rabat to order the immediate departure of the EU fleet from the fishing grounds under its control.

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According to the current agreement, Brussels pays Rabat 52 million euros annually in exchange for 128 fishing licenses for European vessels, 92 of them Spanish; among which are 47 with port in Andalusia, 38 in the Canary Islands and seven in Galicia. Once the extension has been ruled out, the General Secretariat for Fisheries is already working on an aid scheme for the shipowners and fishermen affected.

The Government has warned, however, that this aid will not be given to all vessels included in the agreement, but only to those that have actually fished under it. In the first two years of the current agreement, only a quarter of the fleet that could benefit from it made use of the licence. The reason is, according to sources in the sector, that many consider the Moroccan-Saharan bank as an alternative if there is no fishing in other fishing grounds and that it is not always profitable to fish for the fee that must be paid to Morocco.

✅ There will be aid and financial support for shipowners and fishermen who have been fishing in Moroccan waters and are affected by the conclusion of their #pesca agreement with the EU in six weeks' time.
🎙 Interview in @SurcoyMarea of @CadenaSERAnd 👇 pic.twitter.com/MzLPvunKlv

— Luis Planas Puchades (@LuisPlanas) June 3, 2023

According to Planas, the Government has urged the European Commission, which is competent in the matter, to negotiate "as soon as possible" with Morocco a new fisheries protocol to replace the one that expires in six weeks. "We are fully informed of the negotiation and intervene in it, but it has to be the European Commission that gets the agreement," said the minister. In any case, it is taken for granted that the new agreement will not arrive until the appeal that the European Commission filed against the judgment of the General Court of the EU that annulled the agreement in force since 2019 is ruled. Although there is no date for such a ruling, it is expected to be made public later this year or early next year.

In the background of the legal dispute is the conflict in Western Sahara, in whose waters 90% of the catches included in the fisheries protocol with the EU are produced. The European Court of First Instance annulled the current agreement in September 2021 on the grounds that the Commission should have obtained the consent of the Polisario Front, as the legitimate representative of the Saharawi people, as it is a territory pending decolonization. Despite this ruling, both this agreement and the trade agreement with Morocco remained in force until the appeal that the European Commission itself, at the request of Spain, presented to the Court of Justice of the EU is resolved.

The fact that the protocol affects such a politically sensitive issue may prolong the negotiation. Already in 2018, when the previous agreement expired, there was no extension and the Spanish fleet took a year to return to the waters under Moroccan control. In November 2011, following the European Parliament's rejection of the extension, Spanish fishermen spent two years and three months without being able to fish in these fishing grounds.

Although there have been technical contacts between the European Commission and Rabat, negotiations are still at a preliminary stage. In April, Moroccan Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Mohamed Sadiki said his country was prepared "for any scenario" and that the new agreement should be negotiated with "another rule", ruling out a mere extension.

The expiration of the agreement between the EU and Morocco just six days before the general elections will probably make the relationship with the southern neighbor sneak into the electoral campaign and will swell the list of pending issues that the new government will have to face in its relationship with Rabat. After the turn in the traditional Spanish policy on the Sahara, decided by the Government of Pedro Sánchez in March 2022, by which he went on to support the Moroccan autonomy plan for the former colony, Spain has managed to get Morocco to strengthen the control of its borders and drastically reduce the arrival of boats. On the other hand, the opening of the commercial customs of Ceuta and Melilla, agreed 14 months ago, is still pending and at the moment only three pilot tests of passage of goods through the land borders have been carried out, the last of them on May 26.

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