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Hungary's support, expressed on Wednesday, November 27, for Morocco's autonomy plan for the Sahara, is the logical outcome of a process initiated in recent years by Moroccan diplomacy with Central European countries.
This process was launched in 2021, at a time when relations between the Kingdom and its traditional partners in Western Europe—France, Spain, and Germany—were faltering. With Paris, there was the crisis over the reduction in visas granted to Moroccans, while ties with Madrid were extremely strained due to the secretive hospitalization of the Polisario leader. As for Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel chose to bet on Algiers for various reasons.
Three years after this opening to Central Europe, the results are more than satisfactory. In June 2021, Morocco was invited to take part in a ministerial meeting of the Visegrád Group. On December 7 of the same year, Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita traveled to Budapest to take part in a session of this bloc within the European Union, made up of four Central European countries : Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. All are also members of NATO.
Morocco succeeds in its policy toward Central Europe
Without exception, the four members of the Group support the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, submitted by Rabat in 2007. This support is spreading to other European countries, anchoring in Eastern Europe, the Baltic Sea, and Northern Europe. Estonia, Finland, and Denmark have all signed up to the Moroccan solution to the conflict in Western Sahara. The same applies to Slovenia, Romania, and Serbia.
This support comes despite a strong Algerian diplomatic offensive towards these countries. Since his appointment as head of Algerian diplomacy on March 18, 2023, Ahmed Attaf has visited Central Europe and held meetings with his counterparts in the region. On September 8 in Budapest, he asked his Hungarian counterpart to invite him to a meeting of the Visegrád Group. «We would like to inform the Visegrád Group about the situation in our region and Algeria's efforts to ensure security, stability, development, and prosperity», he explained his country's request.
Last June, he headed for Warsaw, where he met Poland's Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in September, in New York, he met Slovakia's Head of Diplomacy. In all these contacts, the Sahara issue was high on Ahmed Attaf's agenda. The Algerian made a point of raising the issue in his statements to the press.
With France's decision to recognize Morocco's sovereignty and Donald Trump's return to power in the United States, a new era is opening up for Morocco to confirm its successes in Central and Eastern Europe, with new recognitions.
