Morocco-EU Fisheries Agreement: Polisario’s Complaint Rejected by EU Court
The Algeria-backed Polisario has suffered a new defeat in the European Union Court of Justice. A ruling of the court, rendered on July 19, has rejected an appeal lodged by the separatist front in 2014 against the Morocco-EU fisheries agreement and slammed it as ineligible to lodge such an appeal.
After the Court’s rulings issued in 2015 and 2016 on the Morocco-EU Association Agreement and the Morocco-EU Agricultural Agreement dismissed the Polisario’s claims, this July 2018, the Luxembourg-based court again rejected the separatists’ demand to annul the fisheries agreement concluded in 2013.
The Polisario and its Algeria-financed lobbyists have been leading for several years a judicial guerrilla against the Morocco-EU trade agreements, contesting Morocco’s legitimacy to govern its Southern Sahara provinces but it was without counting on the wisdom and firmness of the judges of the Fifth Chamber of the EU Court who rejected the action for annulment brought in 2014.
In this connection, the court considered that the Polisario front “is not directly or individually concerned” by the fisheries agreement and “cannot, in any case, be considered, given the arguments it relies on, as having locus standi”. It therefore declared the action for annulment as “inadmissible in its entirety” and ordered the Polisario to pay “in addition to its own costs, the judicial proceeding costs incurred by the Council of the European Union”.
This new verdict of the European Court of Justice declaring the Polisario as not concerned by the EU-Morocco trade agreements and ineligible to plea at the court dealt a new scathing blow to the front and its mentors and shattered its separatist whims.
Anyways, paying no attention to the phantasmagorical elucubrations of the Polisario and Algeria, Morocco and the European Union initialed Tuesday (July 24) in Rabat a new four-year fisheries agreement. The agreement delimits the fishing zones on the entire Atlantic coast of Morocco, from Cap Spartel in the North to Cap Blanc in the far South of the Sahara.
