The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in October 2024 that trade deals concluded between the EU and Morocco in 2019 were unlawful because they applied to Western Sahara without having the consent of the people of Western Sahara.

Morocco illegally annexed Western Sahara in the 1970s and currently occupies around two-thirds of the territory. The rest is controlled by the partially-recognised Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), proclaimed by the Polisario Front.

A new EU-Morocco trade deal has been proposed by the European Commission and is expected to be adopted by the European Council by the weekend.

However, the text of the draft agreement and explanatory memorandum have not yet been published, according to Western Sahara Resource Watch (WRSW).

In a blog post published yesterday, WRSW said: “The EU’s rush and secrecy around this agreement undermine not only the Saharawi people’s rights, but also the EU’s own democratic standards.”

Earlier this week, the Sahrawi Observatory for Natural Resources and Environmental Protection (SONREP) accused the European Commission of a “deliberate attempt to circumvent” the CJEU’s rulings.

“Negotiating such an agreement with Morocco, and excluding the Sahrawi people from the process, constitutes a violation of international law, including the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources,” it said.

“It also undermines the UN-led peace process and erodes the credibility of the European Union as an actor bound by its own legal order.”

It called on the EU to suspend “all negotiations with Morocco concerning Western Sahara” and to “ensure that any future agreement is contingent upon the free, prior, and informed consent of the Sahrawi people, through its legal representative the Polisario Front in accordance with their right to self-determination”.

“The Sahrawi people alone have the right to determine the use of their land and resources. Any trade arrangement that excludes them is illegal, unethical, and unsustainable,” it added.