Bucharest, October 12, 2024 – by Constantin Radut – Few Romanians have noticed that, lately, “made in Morocco” tomatoes have disappeared from the offer of hypermarkets in Bucharest. Among the North African countries, only Morocco managed to enter the Romanian market with various products, including canned sardines and some vegetables, including tomatoes. Algeria, although it can offer an interesting range of goods, including exotic fruits, no longer exports anything to Romania from foodstuffs, and Tunisia, in the past the leader among these countries in the export of canned fish to Romania, has completely disappeared.
The subject of our text has a different connotation than the examination of import/export flows between Romania and the Arab Maghreb.
The disappearance of the offer of Moroccan tomatoes from the offer of traders in Romania is determined by a significant event in regional geopolitics.
On Friday 4 October 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJUE) annulled the fisheries and agriculture agreements between Rabat and Brussels on the grounds that they were concluded “without the consent of the people of Western Sahara”. This is what he mentions in the extensive analysis of Jeune Afrique magazine. This magazine also quotes from the CJUE decision:” “The EU-Morocco trade agreements of 2019 in the field of fisheries and agricultural products, to which the people of Western Sahara did not agree, were concluded in disregard of the principles of self-determination and the relative effect of the treaties .”
This legal verdict of October 4, 2024, causes great political agitation in the capitals of some EU states that are “accustomed” to violating the legal decisions of the CJEU.
What effects does the CJEU decision have?
The CJUE decision of October 4, 2024 has two important effects:
>>> The first is that the Polisario Front is a subject of international law, representative of the Saharawi people and has the capacity to plead under European law and before all European courts.
>>> The second is that any economic activity of a European company on the territory of Western Sahara requires the consent of the Polisario Front.
Such legal clarifications are unprecedented in the jurisprudence of the relations between the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (RADS) and the Kingdom of Morocco. And the Polisario is no longer seen only as the armed arm of the former Western Sahara, but a representative political body of the Sahrawi people.
We remind the readers that RADS is the only non-state territory in the world, officially recognized by almost 50 countries in the world and a member of some regional institutions.
The history of the Sahrawi Republic is linked to the former colonial state, namely Spain, which in 1975 announced to international bodies that it was renouncing this territory – Western Sahara – which it had under tutelage. Polisario, a military organization fighting for the liberation of the territory from the Spanish colonial regime, declared itself a symbol of the struggle for independence and claimed sovereignty over Western Sahara. In February 1976, Polisario declared the establishment of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
However, after the departure of the Spaniards, the Kingdom of Morocco immediately decides that the Western Sahara is part of the history of the Kingdom of Alawites, claims and occupies the territory. The dispute and the fighting between the Polisario and the Rabat regime continues until today.
Following Morocco’s refusal to organize a referendum on the status of the Western Sahara, the political and military battles regarding the territory’s sovereignty, the Western Sahara is today made up of two territories, one with the majority of its surface (almost 80%) occupied by the Moroccan Kingdom and the rest by the RADS.
Following the military battles, and as a sign of protest, the majority of the population of Sahrawi origin was moved to the Algerian territory, on the border with the former Western Sahara (RADS territory), and in the western part, behind a “wall” of sand built by Morocco , colonization and various economic activities take place.
The decision of the CJUE, which I spoke about at the beginning of this text, brings up to date the great battle for the sovereignty of a territory and a people made up of dozens of nomadic tribes who want to build their future with their own forces.
