Ceuta border surge shakes Morocco’s image as the EU’s ‘trusted partner’

Lost in the furious response from EU leaders accusing Spain of gross negligence by allowing the storming of the EU border in Ceuta last Thursday (30 July), a Spanish enclave on the African continent next to Morocco, is the damage that this could do to EU relations with Rabat. Though Spain is facing most of the anger from EU members for the mass border crossing, Morocco’s own standing with the EU has been badly damaged. The crossing is the most serious crisis at the Spanish enclaves on the African continent since 2021. An estimated 60,000 migrants crossed into Spanish territory, a process that left a death toll of more than 70 on Monday (3 August). The 2021 crisis was deliberately caused by Morocco opening the border at Ceuta – a retaliation against Spain after Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Polisario Front, the political arm of the Sahrawi independence movement, travelled to Spain in an Algerian jet on an Algerian diplomatic passport to be treated for coronavirus. Five years on, Morocco has positioned itself as the EU’s most “key and trusted” ally on trade, counter-terrorism and migration control and it is hard to see why they would jeopardise this. Morocco’s latest PR triumph was in getting Christopher Nolan to film part of his Hollywood epic based on Homer’s Odyssey in the sand dunes of Dakhla in Western Sahara, part of a push to make Western Sahara a tourist destination. Rabat’s big diplomatic breakthrough on Western Sahara, which it has claimed ever since Spain abandoned the former colony in the 1970s, came in 2020 when US president Donald Trump recognised its sovereignty as a quid pro quo for Morocco recognising Israel as part of the Abraham Accords. After France and Spain led a group of EU countries recognising Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, a disputed territory on Morocco’s south-west, the EU endorsed that position en bloc at a foreign ministers meeting in March. The EU Commission has also effectively overruled a series of European Court of Justice rulings stating that the bloc’s trade treaties with Morocco cannot apply to products from Western Sahara. Rabat is also set to be, along with Egypt, the main beneficiary from the EU’s new ‘Pact for the Mediterranean’, a commission initiative launched last year designed to bring the region closer in a raft of policy areas including education, energy, skills, and climate change.