Rabat – Lawmakers from the EU Commission have once again delivered a clear message about the importance of maintaining the EU-Morocco partnership, particularly the agriculture agreement.
Morocco and the EU signed an amended agricultural agreement last year in October, extending preferential tariff treatment to products from southern provinces in Western Sahara.
In an ordinary meeting of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development this week, lawmakers emphasized that agricultural products represent around one-third of all products imported into the EU from Morocco’s southern provinces in Western Sahara.
Lawmaker Matthias Petschke explained that the vast majority of the products imported into the EU from the southern provinces are fisheries products, which “make up the bulk of those imports in terms of volume and value.”
“The agreement in question is not an agricultural agreement; it is an agreement on tariff preferences for products originating from Western Sahara,” the lawmaker said, emphasizing that these tariffs are applied to all products and not only agricultural goods.
Of some 203 million tons of products imported from the region in 2022, he revealed, 129 million tons were fisheries products such as canned sardines.
Only 74 million tonnes were agricultural products, including tomatoes and melons.
“It is important to highlight that the 2025 agreement does not change the preferential treatment granted to agricultural products as compared to the older, 2018 agreement,” he explained.
The lawmaker acknowledged pressure on the EU amid pro-Polisario maneuvers, acknowledging that “there has been particular concern about the importation of tomatoes from Western Sahara.”
In addition, he revealed that the EU has in recent years imported a total annual volume of roughly 800,000 tons of tomatoes.
The EU’s imports from Morocco’s Western Sahara region were imported slightly below 70,000 tons, exactly 8.2% of the bloc’s total tomato imports in volume.
The EU lawmakers further explained that the origin labeling rules are already fully respected.
In line with the requirements of the updated EU-Morocco agreement, the products coming from Morocco’s southern provinces are clearly designed under the regions of Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra or Dakhla-Oued Eddahab.
The lawmakers’ remarks come on the heels of ongoing campaigns by the pro-Polisario, Algeria-sponsored European activists and politicians who have long called on the EU to consider the southern Moroccan provinces as an independent state.
Having failed to torpedo the UN-led political process, which in recent years has decisively sided with Morocco on the Western Sahara question, these campaigns are now increasingly attempting to undermine the EU-Morocco partnership.
Meanwhile, Morocco has consistently emphasized its readiness to end all its partnerships with the EU, regardless of their economic impact and strategic significance, if the bloc fails to demonstrate respect for Moroccan territorial integrity.
This bold warning appears to have borne fruit in recent years, with the EU and Morocco now working closely to revive the fisheries agreement.
