Morocco-EU Free Trade Agreement: The ins and outs of a renegotiation that promises to be tough! [INTEGRAL]

Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Soufiane CHAHID
Published on 2024-03-19 10:55:00

The free trade agreement between Morocco and the European Union could be in jeopardy. The anger of European farmers provides the perfect context for a shift of this text towards what the European Commission promotes as a “new generation agreement”.

For the past four months, several European countries have been shaken by a farmers’ revolt. This movement, of rare intensity, particularly targets the policies imposed by the European Union (EU). For these farmers, Brussels not only dictates increasingly restrictive regulations, but also subjects them to unfair competition from other countries by multiplying free trade agreements (FTAs).

Indeed, criticism of this “free-trade” approach of the EU has crystallized around the FTA with Mercosur. Signed in 2019, this agreement has been blocked since then, as it risks opening the European market to several South American countries and their abundant and cheap agricultural production.

If some European states have managed to freeze this treaty, others want to go further by renegotiating existing FTAs. Madrid is working at the European level to simplify the rules of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and strengthen certain clauses in the FTAs, particularly regarding agricultural and environmental constraints.

On this last issue, the Spanish government is under strong pressure from Spanish farmers, who have particularly targeted the agricultural agreement between Morocco and the EU. According to them, Moroccan fruits and vegetables are largely responsible for their situation. Opposition to this agreement has even taken a violent turn, with the ransacking of several trucks carrying Moroccan tomatoes.

Riding on this anger, the far-right party Vox has called for the definitive termination of this agreement. In a statement released at the end of February, the party states that the text “does not guarantee equality of conditions and opportunities between the two parties”, jeopardizing thousands of jobs in rural areas of the EU. According to them, Morocco engages in unfair competition with European farmers due to advantageous production conditions, especially in terms of labor costs.

“Obsolete Framework”

Vox is part of this European sovereigntist bloc, which could win the upcoming European elections in June. This camp makes opposition to open trade throughout Europe its battleground. If this new development could put pressure on Morocco, it will only confirm a trend already in place within the European Commission.

“Some European officials believe that the framework that governed the signing of trade agreements with Morocco is obsolete,” a source familiar with the workings of European institutions tells us. Our interlocutor refers to the “new generation agreements”, which no longer focus solely on commercial aspects, but also include harmonization of standards, whether they are health, social, technical, or environmental.

“With these new generation agreements, the EU adopts an innovative approach focused on spreading standards and values that correspond to its vision of the economic order and international trade rules to its partners,” explains Alan Hervé, a professor at Sciences Po Rennes specializing in EU law.

He cites as an example the introduction of certain chapters in treaties that address compliance with ecological criteria or human rights. Agreements of this kind have already been signed with Canada (CETA), the UK, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, New Zealand, etc. The EU has also modernized its association agreement with Chile in December 2023 based on these new criteria and is currently negotiating the same with Mexico.

“À la carte” Relationship

Will Morocco be next on the list? “The European Commission has clearly expressed its desire for all future agreements to respect the new format, or even for all old agreements already signed to be revised,” Alan Hervé tells us.

In a 2021 communication entitled “Reassessment of trade policy: An open, sustainable, and firm trade policy,” the Commission indicates that “negotiations for a deep and comprehensive free trade area have been ongoing for several years with Morocco and Tunisia. The EU is willing to discuss with both partners the feasible solutions to modernize trade and investment relations to better adapt them to current challenges.”

However, as Alan Hervé points out, revising an agreement requires the consent of both parties. The Moroccan diplomacy has repeatedly emphasized that it cannot accept a relationship “à la carte” with its partners. Cooperation between Morocco and the EU covers a wide range of areas, including trade, energy, security, and the fight against illegal immigration. To manage migration flows, the EU allocates nearly 150 million euros to the Kingdom, compared to 7.4 billion euros for Egypt, for example.

Regarding the trade aspect, both are bound by a Euro-Mediterranean association agreement that came into force in 2000, a renewed agricultural agreement in 2019, and a fishing agreement that expired in July 2023 and will be renegotiated later this year.

Regularly renewed since 1988 for a duration of four years, these last two agreements were invalidated by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in September 2021 following a complaint from the Polisario. Following this decision, the European Council and the European Commission filed an appeal with suspensive effect before the CJEU.

The EU’s Attorney General, the Croatian Tamara Capeta, is expected to issue her opinion on the legal validity of these last two texts on March 21. If the annulment is maintained, Rabat and Brussels will have to renegotiate them on new bases. The most important thing for the Kingdom is to include agricultural and fishing products from its southern provinces.

“3 Questions to Alan Hervé: ‘In FTAs, there is a paradoxically protectionist dimension'”

“Why does the EU sign so many Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)?”

From a commercial point of view, the EU is a major exporting power, but also an importer. There is an economic interest for the Union to ensure privileged access to third countries’ markets. The other reason is that the WTO was, until recently, the framework for international trade relations.

However, in recent years, the WTO has been greatly weakened, and negotiations for new rules within the WTO have not materialized. Therefore, since the early 2000s, the EU has chosen to turn to FTAs to ensure common trading rules with its trading partners.

Moreover, FTAs allow the EU to disseminate standards and values that correspond to its vision of the global economic order and international standards. In “new generation agreements,” you will find chapters on sustainable development, where the EU tries to impose environmental and social norms on its partners.

“Can these standards be considered protectionist?”

In FTAs, there is a dimension that can paradoxically be considered protectionist, as both parties defend their own interests. So, they are not just instruments of market opening and liberalism, but also partly instruments of protection.

The specificity is that these EU protectionist measures are largely in the form of legislation taken by the EU itself and applied within its market. For example, the carbon border adjustment mechanism, or the regulation on deforestation, as well as another text being negotiated within the EU on trade in products from forced labor.

“Is there opposition to these FTAs within the EU?”

This opposition has been manifested in civil society for several years. It was very strong during the negotiations for the FTA between the EU and the United States, but also for the CETA with Canada. Today, this opposition is taken up by some EU member states, such as France, which refuses to sign the EU-Mercosur agreement, given the risks it poses to the agricultural sector.

Common Agricultural Policy: A Text That Is Not Well Received

In addition to FTAs, the other reason for the anger of European farmers is the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the period 2023-2027. Focused on ecological transition and biodiversity conservation, this policy is considered highly restrictive and impractical by farmers. Among the “conditionalities” criticized by agricultural organizations as impractical in the face of climatic uncertainties are the obligation to rotate crops, with a different crop from the previous year on 35% of arable land.

After the protests in recent months, Brussels has proposed legislative revisions to drastically reduce the environmental rules of the CAP. The goal is to reduce administrative burden, give farmers and states greater flexibility to comply with certain conditions without lowering the overall level of environmental ambition.

“Green Deal”: The Big Challenge for the National Economy

It arouses the anger of farmers and industrialists all over Europe, yet it is among the new conditions of the European Union’s Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). It is the Green Deal, which involves a series of measures aimed at adapting EU policies in several areas, with the overall goal of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.

While Moroccan-European trade performance is mainly driven by the automotive industry and agriculture, the Green Deal envisages banning the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines by 2035. On the agricultural side, the EU sets objectives to reduce pesticide use by 50% by 2030, increase biodiversity in agricultural ecosystems, and have 25% of agricultural land under organic farming.

In June 2023, the European Commission introduced a set of measures to promote sustainable use of essential natural resources to strengthen the resilience of the agricultural and food sectors of the old continent.

This set of measures includes a new soil health law, with the goal of having healthy soil in the EU by 2050, a regulation on plants produced by genomic techniques, and measures to reduce food and textile waste. To achieve these commendable goals, aid to farmers is granted to ensure a smooth transition. And Morocco should do the same to adapt to the new EU standards.

Read the original article(French) on L’Opinion