CJEU excludes the Western Sahara waters from the fisheries agreement

The long-awaited ruling has finally been made public this Tuesday. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), announced the morning in a communiqué its decision regarding the fisheries agreement concluded between the EU and Morocco.

According to the court, the agreement is «valid in so far as it is not applicable to Western Sahara and to its adjacent waters». After assessing whether such agreements are compatible with the treaties and the rules of international law which bind the EU, the CJEU explained that :

Therefore, the court stresses that «neither the Fisheries Agreement nor the Protocol thereto are applicable to the waters adjacent to the territory of Western Sahara, the EU acts relating to their conclusion and implementation are valid».

The CJEU decision and the Polisario

The CJEU’s verdict comes as the Polisario Front is celebrating the 42nd anniversary of its creation. In fact, the «Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic» was proclaimed on February 27, 1976, as the Polisario declared the need for a new entity to fill what they considered a political void left by the departing Spanish colonizers.

The timing is certainly the beginning of a diplomatic crisis between the European Union’s countries and the Kingdom of Morocco. Following the judgment of 21 December 2016 issued by the Court of Justice, Morocco has gone through a series of negotiations to overcome the obstacles set by the decision.

For the record, the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement, expected to expire on the 14th of July, entered into force on the 28th of February in 2007 for a four-year period and it was renewed twice. The current protocol was signed on the 18th of November in 2013 and was endorsed by the Council and the European Court, according to a note published by the European Union’s website. The same agreement was applied on the 15th of July 2014 after the completion of the internal ratification procedures by Morocco.

Western Sahara Campaign, a British NGO «in solidarity with the Saharawi people to generate political support in order to advance their right to self-determination and to promote their human rights», had sued the British government because of that.

The case dates back to March 2015 when a well-known law firm, Leigh Day & Co, was mandated by the NGO to lodge a complaint with the Supreme Court of London against the Ministry of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Royal Department of Tax Revenues. In October 2015, the UK's highest court ruled that the case should be referred to the CJEU.