Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, yesterday reached several agreements to hold next November the postponed High Level Meeting (RAN, for its acronym in Spanish) and to open in January the passage of goods through land customs posts.
“Barely six months after the Joint Declaration that opened a new stage in relations between Spain and Morocco, I have just held a meeting with my good friend Nasser Bourita in which we have designed the next steps,” the minister told the press after meeting with Bourita in New York, on the margins of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
“We have agreed to work towards holding the High Level Meeting before the end of the year, as planned, aiming for this to take place, if possible, during the month of November,” he continued. “This will be a new opportunity to take stock and continue moving forward together and reaffirming the Spanish-Moroccan friendship”, added Albares, who recalled that the RAN “has not been held since 2015.
The meeting was initially scheduled for December 2020, but has been postponed because of the pandemic and the serious diplomatic crisis that broke out between the two countries in the spring of 2021 and which was straightened out last March with the unexpected decision of the government of Pedro Sanchez to accept the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
The two ministers also agreed to “work so that the beginning of the passage of goods in an orderly and gradual manner through the land customs posts (of Ceuta and Melilla) takes place throughout the month of January”. This measure implies the reopening of the customs office in Melilla and the opening of the first customs office in Ceuta. In this regard, the Government of Pedro Sánchez is urgently processing the execution of works at the Tarajal border, in Ceuta, to have the minimum infrastructure necessary for the entry into operation of a customs checkpoint.
According to Albares, “all the working groups created by the roadmap of the Spanish-Moroccan Declaration of April 7 have held meetings and are complying with the planned work schedule”, which has allowed to resume “air, sea and land communications” and to recover “the circulation of goods in a regular and orderly manner”. In fact, he assured, “Spanish exports to Morocco have grown by 30% so far this year alone, reaching 6,000 million euros, consolidating Spain’s position as the leading trading partner with our southern neighbor”.
The Minister also announced that, “to contribute to the economic development of our southern neighbor, the Government of Spain is going to approve a project of the Development Promotion Fund worth 20 million euros, the first for more than twenty years in Morocco, for the granting of microcredits that will favor the inclusion of young people and women in the productive system”, and has offered “collaboration through technical assistance in the railway sector and in the water, sanitation and salinization sector to set up integrated systems on a national scale like those that exist in Spain”.
On the other hand, according to Albares, “in the field of migration, there are data that demonstrate the excellent cooperation”. “The numbers of irregular arrivals have been reduced by 20% during the last four months compared to the same period last year, and this is the result, among other reasons, of joint work against criminal networks of human trafficking,” so “we have agreed to continue strengthening our cooperation, especially on the Atlantic coast,” he added.
