2024-02-20 14:21:05
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, He will make an official trip to Morocco this Wednesday, accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares.
“Morocco is a neighboring country, friend and strategic partner of Spain in all areas,” reads the statement distributed by La Moncloa. “This visit, which takes place at the beginning of this new legislature, underlines the deep ties that unite both countries.”
This visit by the Chief Executive will be the first since the XII High Level Meeting (RAN) on February 1 and 2 of last year, in which they tried to capture the objectives of the joint roadmap between both countries. Sánchez then met with the Moroccan Prime Minister, Aziz Ajanuch. Then he was not received by the Moroccan king Mohamed VI, but he invited him to meet on other dates.
The surprise trip (it was announced just hours before it began) comes two weeks after the visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to Algeria was suspended. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was not going to receive the head of Spanish diplomacy, as he usually does with foreign ministers who visit the country.
Roadmap slowness
In the last legislature, the issue of Morocco, Western Sahara and Algeria was at the epicenter of the national debate on foreign policy. Pedro Sánchez decided two years ago to change Spain’s historical neutrality towards the Sahara to favor the solution offered by Rabat for the historic dispute (an autonomy plan within the Kingdom). The opposition then fully charged against this turn and questioned what Spain had obtained in return.
Rabat once again sent its ambassador to Madrid, and controls irregular emigration. However, the customs of Ceuta and Melilla remain unopened. One of the most conflictive points is the delimitation of the waters between Morocco and the Canary Islands, which overlap in several areas. In this sense, the parties committed to “reactivate the working group on the delimitation of maritime spaces on the Atlantic coast, with the aim of achieving concrete progress.” None have been known.
The negotiations on the management of the airspace over Western Sahara are being carried out with the utmost secrecy, which is now carried out by Spain from the Canary Islands and claimed by Morocco and which has complex implications of international legislation.
Immigration appeared to be one of the most important outcomes of the renewed relationship with Morocco. It was one of the weapons of pressure used by the Maghreb neighbor, which allowed thousands of Moroccans to attempt entry through Ceuta on one day in 2021. “Our cooperation on migration is a true global model,” he said this Thursday in Morocco. José Manuel Albares.
However, the number of arrivals is increasing after declining last year. Especially on the so-called “Canary route”: 32,422 people between January and November, according to the European border agency Frontex. It is more than double all those that occurred in 2022. On the Strait route, the figure has fallen 2% to 13,507 entries. In the European context there has been a record number of entries since 2016, although the increase is 17% compared to the previous year.
The Spanish minister justified himself by claiming that he was starting from “very low figures the previous year” and the increase in instability in the Sahel. “They do not come from Morocco,” he assures, and highlights how they remain low on the Central Mediterranean route to Italy or the Eastern Mediterranean route to Greece.
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