Morocco, France and the European Union have jointly launched two new programs at a ceremony in Rabat on Thursday 9 April, marking a significant step in the trilateral effort to build structured, rights-based pathways for legal labor mobility between North Africa and Europe. The two initiatives — THAMM+ Équipe France and the second phase of the Regional Migration Initiative Program (PRIM2) — are designed to complement each other: the former creates supervised professional mobility pathways, while the latter embeds migration governance into Morocco’s regional institutional architecture.
THAMM+ Équipe France — the Franco-Moroccan bilateral arm of the broader EU-funded THAMM program — focuses on establishing durable, sector-specific mobility channels between the two countries, with particular emphasis on agriculture and hospitality and catering. The program covers the full migration cycle from pre-departure preparation and skills validation through the mobility period itself to a structured return phase. Its institutional backbone is a strengthened partnership between ANAPEC — Morocco’s national employment agency — and French counterpart bodies, supported by Expertise France as the lead implementing agency.
PRIM2, financed by the French Development Agency (AFD), builds on the first PRIM phase launched in 2020 and takes a territorial approach to migration governance. Working alongside the Souss-Massa and Oriental regions, PRIM2 supports regional authorities in translating national migration policies into locally owned and operationally grounded strategies. This decentralization of migration governance reflects Morocco’s broader model of advanced regionalization and its ambition to manage migration as a development tool rather than a security problem.
EU Ambassador Dimiter Tzantchev, French Ambassador Christophe Lecourtier and senior Moroccan government officials addressed the launch. Lecourtier situated the initiative explicitly within the decades-long Franco-Moroccan partnership, describing the programs as concrete expressions of a shared vision in which migration is a triple win — for the individual, for Morocco and for France. Tzantchev underlined the EU’s framing: that THAMM+ is a direct implementation of the EU Talent Partnerships framework, committing the bloc to safe, legal and mutually beneficial migration as a bridge between European and Moroccan societies.
The launch is timely. Morocco has long been recognized as a model for migration governance in the region, owing to its 2013 National Immigration and Asylum Strategy developed under Royal impetus. THAMM+ and PRIM2 operationalize that strategic positioning by converting partnership declarations into funded, monitored and accountable programs. In a European context marked by growing pressure on irregular migration routes, the ability to demonstrate that legal, structured mobility works — and works at scale — carries considerable political significance for both sides of the Mediterranean.
