Abstract
North Africa in general and Morocco in particular are a clear instance of the potential of the European Union (EU) as an influential player in world affairs. In this region, the EU is a key political, security, economic and trade partner. However, although the EU presence is undeniable, it remains timid and is characterized by a high level of pragmatism and realism rather than norm setting and the moral high ground. This is illustrated in this chapter through a discussion of EU relations with North Africa in general, and Morocco in particular.
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- 1.
Relations between independent North African states and the EU carry the weight of the relations established during the colonial period. For instance, the dependence of Tunisia’s and Morocco’s agricultural products—after independence—on the European consuming markets is a consequence of an economic model established during the colonial period. Those economies still carry some of those dependencies until today.
- 2.
- 3.
See Pace (2004).
- 4.
- 5.
See Willis, 2014.
- 6.
It is worth mentioning that President Hollande stopped short from apologizing for war crimes committed during the colonial period or the Algeria war of independence (Le Monde 2012).
- 7.
This chapter is drafted in the midst of the protests in Algeria against the regime, which started in February/March 2019. The consequences of these events are difficult to judge at this juncture.
- 8.
See Willis 2014.
- 9.
This has been Morocco’s dilemma since independence, as discussed by Abdelkhaleq Berramdane in his Le Maroc et l’Occident (Berramdane 1987).
- 10.
See Messari & Van Der Klaauw (2010).
- 11.
Over the last decade, Morocco’s foreign policy can be characterized by three important shifts, although some long held priorities, such as the issue of the Western Sahara and the importance of Morocco’s Western alignments and alliances, remained unchanged. The major shift in Moroccan foreign policy in the current decade has been the rise of the African continent as a key target of Morocco’s foreign policy, the growing importance of trade in the agenda of Moroccan diplomats, and finally, Morocco’s growing boldness and assertiveness in dealing with foreign powers. For more details, refer to Barre (2012).
- 12.
This episode falls in the same category of enhanced Moroccan assertiveness as two other episodes, one with France and the other one with Sweden. In February 2014, the head of Moroccan Intelligence was in a visit to France, and as he was hosted at the residence of the Moroccan Ambassador (i.e., formally on Moroccan territory and out of reach of France’s justice system), he was subpoenaed by the French police in response to a complaint of a French NGO accusing him of torture, notably in the Western Sahara. Despite the French government’s immediate formal excuses, Morocco suspended judiciary cooperation with France until trust between both sides could be re-established. The consequence of the suspension of Moroccan-French judiciary cooperation had important consequences at several levels, the most relevant of which was the suspension of cooperation between Moroccan and French intelligence offices. The conjunction of terrorist attacks on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015—which underlined the urgency of reestablishing Franco-Moroccan Intelligence cooperation—as well as long and complex negotiations between the Moroccan and the French governments resulted in formal and official guarantees given by France to Morocco regarding the immunity of its officers in France, and then to the reestablishment of the judiciary cooperation between Morocco and France, and a return to the regular solid relations between them.
As was with Sweden, in 2014, discussions regarding the eventual recognition of the Sahrawi Republic by Sweden became public and recurrent, alarming Moroccan authorities. When the Social Democratic Party launched an internal consultation on the issue, Morocco took several measures, some of which were of retaliatory nature, while others were conciliatory. As for the former, in September 2015, Morocco blocked the opening of an Ikea store in Morocco. As for the latter, the government convinced leaders of Moroccan political parties to visit Sweden during the autumn of 2015 and convince their counterparts of the Moroccan position. Symbolically, the first of such visits was led by a woman, Nabila Mounib, who was back then already the leader of a socialist party, and which was, and remains part of the opposition. Morocco also committed to accept the repatriation of some 800 Moroccan unaccompanied minors who were illegally in Sweden. When Sweden abandoned the idea of recognizing the Sahrawi Republic in January 2016, diplomatic relations between Morocco and Sweden went back to normal and the crisis became part of the past.
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Messari, N. (2022). The EU and North Africa, or the Actorness of the Possible. In: Freire, M.R., Lopes, P.D., Nascimento, D., Simão, L. (eds) EU Global Actorness in a World of Contested Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92997-8_9
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