EU slams Algeria’s barriers on trade with Spain

Head of EU Diplomacy Josep Borrell called, on Monday during his two-day visit to Algiers, for a solution to Algeria’s barriers on trade with Spain, introduced in June 2022.

“The barriers introduced [by Algeria] to trade with Spain, since June 2022, must find a solution,” said the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission.

“I am also thinking of the restrictions that hinder European investments in Algeria, which have a direct impact on the implementation of our [EU-Algeria] association agreement. Finding a solution to all this is in our common interest,” the EU official said.

Since last June, the European Commission has “regularly expressed its concern about the trade implications” of Algiers’ decision, “in particular the blocked shipments from Spain.

“Trade policy is an exclusive competence of the EU” and therefore Brussels “is ready to take action against any measure applied against a member state,” stressed Miriam Garcia Ferrer, spokeswoman for the European Commission for Trade, in a recent statement to the Spanish news agency Europa Press.

Business and trade between Spain and Algeria have been blocked since last June.

These blockades on the part of Algiers are the result of the announcement, on June 8, of the suspension of the Treaty of Friendship with Spain, in protest against the Spanish position in support of the autonomy plan in the Moroccan Sahara.

Spain had then described Algeria’s blockade, for such reason, an interference in its internal and sovereign affairs.

The EU, through the voice of Josep Borrell and the Executive Vice President of the European Commission, Valdis Dombrovskis, had expressed “extreme concern” about the decision taken by Algeria to suspend the Treaty of Friendship and Neighborliness signed with Spain in 2002.

The unilateral Algerian act was “a violation of the EU-Algeria Association Agreement,” deemed the two senior European officials, noting that the European Union is “opposed to any type of coercive measures applied against an EU Member State.”