New French FM: Paris Wants to Mend Ties with Rabat

Fez – Stephane Sejourne, France’s newly appointed Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, has pledged to “personally” work towards diplomatic rapprochement between France and Morocco after years of tensions over a wide range of critical issues.

In an interview on Saturday with the French daily France-Ouest, the new chief of French diplomacy said that mending relations between Paris and Rabat is among his top priorities.

“We have had several contacts since my arrival in office,” Sejourne said. “The President of the Republic asked me personally to invest in the Franco-Moroccan ties and also to write a new chapter in this regard.”

Many analysts have cited the question of Western Sahara as one of the prime drivers of the increasing fragility of the once robust and strategic French-Moroccan relations.

Paris’ lukewarm support for Morocco, especially its reluctance to unambiguously declare the Western Sahara region as part of Moroccan territory, is the main reason Morocco no longer sees France as a reliable and strategic ally, analysts have argued in recent years.

However, Sejourne argued in his Saturday interview that France has “always markedbeen marking its presence, even on the most sensitive issues such as that of the Moroccan Sahara where France’s clear and constant support for the Moroccan autonomy plan has been the same since 2007.”

He stressed: “I will do everything to bring France and Morocco closer together. My goal is to start a new page and to adopt a new political agenda with the purpose of regaining trust between both great nations.”

Sejourne’’s reassuring comments come in the wake of lingering tensions between Morocco and France over at least the past half-decade.

While the French elite’s perceived embrace of Morocco-bashing campaigns by the leading French media over the past two years has exacerbated the fragility of relations between Paris and Rabat, analysts agree that the root of the brewing antagonism between the two former allies lies in France’s ambivalence on the Western Sahara issue.

In particular, President Macron, who has on several occasions expressed his preference for mending fences with Algeria over Morocco, has conspicuously failed to follow in the footsteps of the United States and Spain by recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara.

Most recently, questions such as migration management, the mistreatment of Moroccans seeking French visas, and the French media’s paternalistic tendency in covering Moroccan affairs have come to the forefront as Rabat looks to reconsider the longstanding tenets of its once solid cooperation with Paris.

In recent months, several French politicians, including Jean-Luc Melenchon and Marine Le Pen, have openly criticized both France’s foreign policy in the Maghreb and the Macron administration’s response to the September 8 earthquake that struck central Morocco.

In particular, Melenchon lambasted the French media’s treatment of the North African country in the wake of the disaster, deeming it “utterly disrespectful” and “excessive.”

Sejourne’s latest comments at least indicate some degree of official recognition that Paris needs to mend its ties with Rabat.

Yet it remains to be seen what steps the French government will take to meet Morocco’s demands on central issues such as the recent curtailment of visas for Moroccans and Paris’s reluctance to express unequivocal support for Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara region.