EU Court of Justice annuls 2019 EU-Morocco fisheries agreements

The consent of the people of Western Sahara to the implementation, in that non-self-governing territory, of the 2019 EU-Morocco trade agreements regarding fisheries and agricultural products is a condition for the validity of the decisions by which the Council approved those agreements on behalf of the European Union. It is true that a consultation process was carried out by the Commission and by the European External Action Service (EEAS) prior to the adoption of those decisions. However, that consultation process did not concern the people of Western Sahara but the inhabitants who are currently present in that territory, irrespective of whether or not they belong to the people of Western Sahara. As a significant proportion of that people now lives outside that territory, that consultation process was not such as to establish such consent on the part of that people.

However, that consent need not always be explicit. It may be presumed where the agreement does not create obligations for the people who is a third party to that agreement, and where the agreement confers on that people a specific, tangible, substantial and verifiable benefit which derives from the exploitation of that territory’s natural resources and is proportional to the degree of that exploitation.

As the agreements at issue manifestly do not provide for such a benefit, the Court of Justice confirms the General Court’s annulment of the Council’s decisions. The decision concerning the fisheries agreement expired in July 2023 and has thus ceased to produce effects. As regards the agreement concerning liberalisation measures on agricultural products, the Court maintains, for a period of 12 months from today, the effects of the Council’s decision, in view of the serious negative consequences which its immediate annulment would entail for the external action of the European Union and for reasons of legal certainty

Further information: CURIA