The last time French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Morocco in November 2018 the yellow vest protests across France were just beginning and Donald Trump was in the White House. Seems like old times.
The French president arrives for a three-day state visit this week to meet with King Mohammad VI and other Moroccan leaders. In 2024, France and Morocco both face a dramatically different geopolitical landscape from that of 2018, one that requires a new paradigm of security—for France, for Europe, for the Maghreb and beyond.
2023 was a rough year for French influence in the Maghreb and the Sahel. France, along with Mali, Niger and other Sahel and EU allies led a decade-long counterinsurgency and confidence-building campaign in the Sahel that was heavy on whack-a-mole insurgency operations and light on collaborative nation-building endeavors. By December, France was sent packing by three Sahel allies.
Though the French parliamentary elections this past summer failed to clarify core French domestic of foreign policy priorities, French political leadership may well be ready to see neighbors across the Mediterranean Sea with new eyes.
“The present and future of Western Sahara are part of Moroccan sovereignty,” Macron said in a statement concerning the planned visit. Beyond the important pivot on that issue, the visit offers a chance for Macron to re-establish a meaningful re-connection to the Moroccan people and to King Mohammad VI.
The two neighbors complement each other in many ways. French direct investment in Morocco in 2023 totaled more than €635 million. Moroccan exports to France, from automobiles to fruits and vegetables, now total nearly $8 billion.
The benefits are numerous in the security realm, too. Following the November 2015 ISIS-inspired terror attacks on several public venues in Paris, French security services utilized critical Moroccan intelligence information to locate key members of the responsible terror cell. A week after the attacks, French President Francois Hollande received King Mohammed of Morocco in Paris in part to thank him for Rabat’s critical help.
Benefitting, too, from a French-Moroccan rapprochement: Algeria. France’s fraught relationship with its former colony can and should now be seen through the prism of a European power that is humbled by events in the Sahel and now likely to reimagine relationships across Africa. Expect less “winning hearts and minds” and more thinking outside the box from Paris.
French language and culture weigh heavy in the Maghreb region but current foreign economic engagement in Morocco reveal an impressive global mix, from Chinese EV battery plants to Turkish-made drones to American aerospace manufacturers. Starbucks, too.
Realpolitik can exist alongside genuine regional cooperation and multilateralism—France and Morocco have both demonstrated this reality over many decades. The relationship will remain complex but Macron’s visit will likely lay a foundation that better enables honest dialogue and clear expectations.
Leaders in both nations can find solace perhaps in the wisdom of 1950s-era American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles: The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
