The European Court of Justice on the EU-Morocco agricultural and fisheries agreements: an analysis of the legal proceedings and consequences for the actors involved

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the past few years, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has issued several judgments on the international agreements between the European Union (EU) and Morocco and their territorial scope, including the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara. This study examines cases C-104/16 P and C-266/16 concerning, respectively, the Agricultural Agreement and the Fisheries Partnership Agreement between the EU and the Kingdom of Morocco, both of which have revealed a tug-of-war between the judiciary and the legislative and executive powers of the EU regarding the Western Sahara conflict. While the highest European legal authority stated that Western Sahara has a separate and distinct status from Morocco, the Parliament, Commission, and Council have persisted in their long-standing position of viewing the conflict as a result of postcolonial relations between France and Spain, on the one hand, and the Alawite kingdom, on the other. This article analyses the two cases at both the procedural and political levels, in addition to their consequences with regard to the positioning of the actors involved to show that, in the case of the Western Sahara conflict, EU economic and geopolitical interests have prevailed over the application of European and international law.