![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
The European Union (EU) announced an increased commitment to conflict resolution beyond its external border when it adopted the European Neighbourhood Policy in 2003, yet this has not led to any practical initiatives in the western Mediterranean. While the more latent nature of conflicts there puts less pressure on the EU to act than do the ‘hot’ conflicts of the Middle East, various disputes over territorial sovereignty persist and tend to undermine the broader EU ambition to promote stability, Euro-Mediterranean cooperation and region-building. In addition to the bilateral disputes over Gibraltar, Ceuta, Melilla and a number of Spanish islands and rocks off the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, there is the broader regional conflict over Western Sahara, which has long brought tension to relations between Morocco and Algeria and between Spain and each of these North African countries, while also frustrating efforts to build the Arab Maghreb Union. Analysis of the EU's weak responses to both the deadlocked Saharan conflict and to the more recent confrontation that took place between Spain and Morocco over Parsley Island in 2002 shows the importance of internal EU divisions and the Union's concern not to upset partners in North Africa, especially Morocco. Yet, despite the EU's reluctance and/or inability to engage in conflict resolution in the western Mediterranean, its policies do have consequences for regional conflicts, even when the EU claims to be neutral. Its privileging of relations with Morocco involves an acceptance that the Moroccan authorities are valid interlocutors for reaching agreements that affect Western Sahara.
Acknowledgements
This article is partly based on research for an ESRC-funded project on ‘The Spanish-Moroccan Security Relationship and the Euro-Mediterranean Context’ (RES-000-22-0432). It has benefited from several discussions with Hakim Darbouche and from a series of interviews conducted in Brussels in June 2007.
Notes
This is partly because of domestic pressure to defend the status quo and because of a fear that any reaffirmation of the Spanish status of Ceuta and Melilla ‘would negatively affect Spanish claims over Gibraltar’ (Amirah-Fernández Citation2008, p. 354).
González Enríquez Citation(2007) claims that Muslims may become a majority within a decade, and says that when that happens Morocco could call for self-determination and demand a referendum; yet most of the Muslims are now Spaniards and she concludes that they may prefer to remain under Spanish rule for reasons relating to welfare, liberty and the rule of law, although Muslim parties are likely to replace the People's Party as the predominant party of local government.
Prime minister Abbas El Fassi has said one must ‘give time to time’ to secure negotiations on Ceuta and Melilla (El País, 25 February 2008).
Significantly, no mention was made of Perejil in the charter conceding Ceuta the status of an autonomous city in 1995. For Spanish views, see Cajal (Citation2003, pp. 216–227) and García Flores (Citation1999, pp. 359–364). García Florez argues that there was no point arguing about the sovereignty issue so long as Parsley Island remained uninhabited.
Contrary to what is claimed by many, Spain did not claim sovereignty over the islet in July 2002: it simply objected to Morocco changing the (undefined) status quo by means of unilateral direct action.
Indeed Joffé (Citation2008, p. 153) refers to the Moroccan occupation of 1976 as leading to ‘an Algerian military defeat’ the following year.
Aznar apparently claimed that when he phoned Chirac on 15 July 2002 to ask for support over Parsley Island, the French President urged him to transfer all of Spain's remaining North African territory to Morocco; and that Chirac had actively encouraged Morocco to occupy the island – a claim denied by France (Cembrero Citation2006, pp. 50–54). Chirac's role in the affair drew criticism from the Quai d'Orsay (ibid., p. 56).
Aznar had not tried to mobilise EU support against Morocco during the year prior to the Parsley Island confrontation, despite escalating tension: he had attempted to keep a variety of disputes to the bilateral level while ensuring a degree of normality in relations at the multilateral level (inhibited as he was in any case from openly pursuing a national agenda during the first half of 2002, since Spain was presiding over the EU). When faced with military action by Morocco, however, he did appeal to the EU and NATO for solidarity and was deeply disappointed by the European response.
As part of Hispano–Moroccan reconciliation efforts, it was agreed in 2003 that a joint committee would discuss the disputes over maritime limits, but progress cannot be expected so long as the Western Sahara conflict remains unresolved and there is no dialogue on Ceuta-Melilla.
Through its Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO), the Union is the largest donor of aid to the Sahrawi refugees encamped in the Algerian desert at Tindouf.
The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic created by Polisario is a full member of the African Union while Morocco is the only African state absent from it, in protest over the recognition this implies.
A longstanding North-South divide in Morocco has provided the basis for various rebellions against the ruling dynasty, most notably with Abd el-Krim coming close to defeating the Spanish in the north and creating an independent state in the 1920s (Balfour Citation2002). This historical backcloth, together with Mohamed VI's defence of a centralised ‘executive monarchy’, unfettered by parliamentary controls or any power sharing arrangements, is why many observers greeted the country's 2007 autonomy initiative (limited to the Sahara) with scepticism. The section outlining proposed government structures for the region contained a variety of guarantees for ultimate central control: the head of government of the region would be elected by a parliament but invested by the king; ‘he’ shall be ‘the Representative of the State in the Region’ (Kingdom of Morocco Citation2007). Even observers who found some positive elements in the proposals acknowledged that they could only provide a way forward if accompanied by constitutional reform to create a truly democratic political system (López García Citation2007, p. 5).
Particularly since the Iberian enlargement of 1986, the European Parliament has been relatively sympathetic to the Sahrawi cause, but always amenable to Council–Commission leadership in the field of foreign policy. It famously failed to ratify an important EU–Morocco financial protocol back in 1992, but since then the major European party groups have prioritised EU-Moroccan relations. Through the Socialist and Green party groups, the Polisario Front nevertheless has had far greater access to the EP than it has to other EU institutions (Interview with Bouhali Fadeli, Representation du Front Polisario pour la Belgique et le Luxembourg, Brussels, 21 June 2007).
A Portuguese diplomat (personal interview, Brussels, June 2007) linked recent British and Dutch interest in clarifying the legal aspects of cross-border cooperation projects involving the Canary Islands, southern Morocco and Western Sahara to their own ambitions to benefit from future oil finds in the region.
In private, a representative of the party expressed concern about ‘another Cuba’ being created if Western Sahara became independent under Polisario leadership (personal interview, Madrid, December 2003): the inference was that it would have a state-dominated economy at odds with global trends towards liberalisation.
Interview with Rocío Canterla Gómez, Responsable de Comunicación, Asociación Provincial de Sevilla de Amistad con el Pueblo Saharaui, Seville, 10 June 2004.
See the interview with Zapatero in El Mundo, Madrid, 23 April 2004.
El País, 22 June 2007.
For the second time in five years, in November 2007 Morocco recalled its ambassador from Madrid, ostensibly to protest over visits by King Juan Carlos to Ceuta and Melilla, but in all probability for a reason relating to the Western Sahara conflict: a Spanish judicial decision to investigate charges of genocide by senior Moroccan officials around the time of the Green March into the Sahara in 1975 (El País, 6 November 2007).
In a speech in Constantine on 5 December 2007, Sarkozy seemed to promise Algeria a uniquely privileged status: ‘As in the recent past when France offered to Germany to build the Union of Europe on Franco-German friendship, France is coming today to propose to Algeria to build the Union of the Mediterranean on the basis of Franco-Algerian friendship’.
See theparliament.com Citation2006. Despite the concessions, the Swedes rightly remained sceptical about the benefits to Sahrawis, many of whom had become exiles or had been marginalised within the settler economy established by Morocco. Very few Sahrawis are employed in the Moroccan fishing sector.
Corell's letter can be found at: http://www.arso.org/UNlegallady.htm. For Polisario criticism of contradictions in this legal opinion, see http://www.arso.org/boukhari2002.htm.
See ‘EU and Western Sahara’ (a European blog), The Brussels Journal, 25 May 2006 (www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1080), Afrol News, 7 March 2007, at www.afrol.com/articles/18349, Afrol News, 22 May 2007.
Afrol news (http://www.afrol.com), 22 May 2007 [Accessed 7 June 2007].
In contrast to the EU, the USA was careful to exclude Western Sahara from the scope of its free trade agreement with Morocco, signed in 2004.
Nonetheless, mention should be made of a meeting of the European Parliament's ‘Delegation for Relations with the Maghreb Countries and the Arab Maghreb Union’ on 20 March 2007. Although its aim was simply to take stock of the situation in Western Sahara and its format precluded dialogue between the parties, it was unprecedented for an EU body to seek to hear presentations by Moroccan and Algerian ambassadors as well as UN and Polisario representatives, all in the same meeting. In the end, the presentations were cancelled by the committee's bureau after Morocco decided not to attend, having tried unsuccessfully to change the agenda at the last minute through a request that a member of the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs (CORCAS) should also be heard. The EP continues to show sporadic interest in the Saharan conflict, notably when agreements affecting the territory are under EU consideration or when human rights violations are prominent in the media, but it is not permanently interested in this conflict in the way that it is in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (interview with official in EP, 20 June 2007).
EU–Morocco Action Plan, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/action_plans/morocco_enp_ap_final_en.pdf
Scandinavian member states had argued that this should be withheld until the Saharan conflict had been resolved, since otherwise it might render it even more intractable (Cembrero Citation2006, p. 138).
The Work Programme adopted at the first EMP summit, in Barcelona in 2005 (p. 14), declares that the ‘EU should show its willingness to help resolve the conflicts in the region, such as that in the Western Sahara, thus eliminating a significant obstacle to developing the further integration process within the Arab Maghreb Union’ (p. 14). Note, however, the EU's use of the phrase ‘in the Western Sahara’ in preference to ‘in Western Sahara’, thus making reference to geography rather than to a political issue about an occupied territory with claims to statehood.
The European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument document on Cross Border Cooperation (CBC) refers to the CBC Atlantic programme involving Las Palmas, Guelmin-Es-Smara in Morocco and Laâyoune-Boujdour-Sakia El Hamra in Western Sahara and provides the following footnote: ‘On the basis of consultation with its Legal Service, the Commission deems that the regions in question might benefit from the co-operation provided that it is made clear in writing that this does not imply recognition by the Community of the Moroccan claims over the territory of Western Sahara and that projects should benefit the local population of the region concerned. Moreover, these qualifications should be accepted by the Moroccan side’ (Commission of the European Communities 2007, p. 31). There was no immediate Moroccan response to a letter from the Commission requesting confirmation that Morocco accepted these qualifications. In Brussels it was thought likely that Morocco would want to await the outcome of the UN-sponsored peace negotiations before replying (European Commission interviews, June 2007).
An argument developed by Dorothée Schmid at a Euromesco research seminar in Lisbon, June 2007 (Euromesco Newsletter, 17, July–August 2007).
El País, 22 June 2007.
In July 2008, however, Moroccan economy and finance minister Salah Eddine Mezouar did suggest that Morocco was not contemplating the use of pressure over Ceuta and Melilla, where ‘a future without frontiers between Spain and Morocco’ might take 10–20 years (El País, 29 July 2008).