Announced as the consolidation of the improvement of bilateral relations, the last High Level Meeting between Spain and Morocco leaves a bittersweet taste in the Spanish counterpart. The tug of war with Rabat will continue.
Almost eight years after the last summit, Spain and Morocco have just held, on February 1 and 2, a High Level Meeting (RAN) in Rabat with the participation of the Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, the Moroccan Prime Minister, Aziz Ajanuch, and a dozen ministers for each party. A RAN that was called to be special, since it was the first after the historical turn in the Spanish position regarding Western Sahara and, therefore, it should serve to visualize the opening of a new stage of strategic relations between both countries. However, its results have been rather ordinary, and the staging clearly lackluster.
The run-up to the appointment already lowered expectations. According to a roadmap agreed between Sánchez and King Mohamed VI at a meeting in Rabat on April 7 last year, before the RAN, the passage of goods between Moroccan territory and the autonomous cities of Morocco should have reopened normally. Ceuta and melilla. In Ceuta, the necessary infrastructure would be built to house a customs office, while in Melilla the closure decreed by Morocco in 2018 would end.
However, after having pointed out for months the reopening of customs as one of the achievements of the new partnership with Morocco, days before the RAN the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to retract. Finally, on January 27, a pilot test took place with a truck crossing to check that everything was ready. The definitive opening had to be announced in the RAN, but it has not been like that. In the 74 points of the Joint Declaration, there is no date for the opening of customs, only a mention, in point 42, of the commitment of both parties to “the full normalization of the movement of people and goods in an orderly manner”. In fact, the text does not mention the words “customs” or “border” to refer to the border between the two Spanish enclaves and Moroccan territory, which would imply an implicit recognition of Spanish sovereignty over them.
The second jug of cold water for Spain took place hours before the start of the RAN, and its staging tarnished. It was then that it was learned that Mohamed VI had decided not to interrupt his vacation in Gabon to receive Sánchez. Instead, both leaders held a telephone conversation for approximately half an hour. In Madrid, the opposition immediately branded the rebuff of the Alaouite monarch as “humiliation” and “ridiculous”. It is not clear if that was the intention of Mohamed VI. In any case, he is at odds with the notion of a special summit to seal a new strategic relationship.
Neither did the fact that none of the United Podemos ministers attended to enhance the importance of the summit, thus expressing their rejection of the shift in Spanish policy on Western Sahara. It will soon be one year since the Spanish government abandoned its traditional position of neutrality in the conflict to embrace the Moroccan theses. On March 18 of last year, Moncloa announced that Rabat’s autonomy proposal was the “most serious, realistic and credible”. Algeria’s reaction was not long in coming: it withdrew its ambassador from Madrid, limiting diplomatic relations with Madrid to the bare minimum. In the following months, Algiers has shown that from now on Italy will be its priority partner for the export of gas to Europe.
sectoral cooperation
Among the tangible results of the summit is the signing of 19 memorandums of understanding and a financial protocol that will strengthen cooperation in areas such as water management, the environment, agriculture, education, culture, and transport and infrastructure. The government hopes that Spain will become the first commercial partner of the Alaouite kingdom and that the current good relations will help Spanish companies to win succulent public works contracts. Currently, Morocco is already the first destination for Spanish investments in Africa, and Spanish exports reached 10,000 million euros in 2022.
An area of special interest to the government is the control of migratory flows, which is also reinforced by the RAN, although the new joint measures have not been specified. It is also worth noting the establishment of a reinforced dialogue mechanism between the two countries, based on mutual respect, whose objective is “to avoid everything that we know offends the other party, especially as it affects our respective spheres of sovereignty”. .
From the Moncloa they value the results of the RAN in a “satisfactory” way, but they have not been able to avoid the feeling, in a large part of the Spanish public opinion, that they know little. The results could be appreciated if this had been an ordinary summit, but not the one that should stage a turning point in the relationship between the two countries. Above all, taking into account the high price paid by Spain with its historic turn on Western Sahara –and by extension in the Maghreb–, as well as by the PSOE, which days before the RAN was left alone, along with a handful of deputies far-right, by voting against a resolution condemning human rights violations in Morocco in the European Parliament.
In their joint appearance, Ajanuch not only praised the change in the Spanish position in the Sahara, but also urged Sánchez to “redouble joint efforts” to fight in various areas, among which he cited “separatist groups and armed militias” , a clear reference to the Polisario Front. Only the future will tell if this RAN will mark a before and after in bilateral relations, but there is no doubt that Rabat clearly seems to be an insatiable partner.
