EU-Morocco Trade Deal Annulled Over Western Sahara Concerns

The European Union's highest court annulled a controversial agricultural deal with Morocco Thursday, due to its inclusion of the disputed Western Sahara territory.

First inked in 2012, the deal dramatically extended duty-free sales of farm and fisheries produce between the EU and Morocco.

However, the agreement quickly sparked backlash from the Frente Polisario, an independence movement representing the indigenous Sahrawi people of the Moroccan occupied territory of Western Sahara.

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The Polisario had argued the agreement didn't explicitly exclude trade in products potentially illegally extracted from Western Sahara.

Now, the European Court of Justice says it agrees. The court ruled the text of the trade deal “permits the implementation of the agreement in Western Sahara.”

The verdict has been welcomed by the Sahrawi advocacy group, Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW).

"This judgment shows how clear-cut the Western Sahara case is legally. Neither Morocco nor the EU have the right to exploit the resources of Western Sahara. No state in the world recognizes the baseless Moroccan claims to that land,” said WSRW Sara Eyckmans.

“If the EU wants to deal with the goods of Western Sahara, they need to first consult the people of the territory, not Morocco,” she added.

Sahrawi independence activists have long accused Morocco of using trade in Western Saharan resources to legitimize its occupation of the disputed territory.

Morocco seized control of most of Western Sahara during a decades-long, three-way war with Mauritania and the Polisario. Today, the Polisario controls a thin strip of the territory's eastern desert, while all of Western Sahara's main settlements remain under Moroccan military occupation.

As many as 300,000 ethnic Sahrawi living under the occupation have been abused by Moroccan security forces, according to a report from a Western Saharan human rights group earlier this year.

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