The EU Court of Justice will rule on the Union's trade and fisheries agreements with Morocco in occupied Western Sahara on 29 September.
A long anticipated ruling will be announced by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) at 11am of 29 September 2021.
The decision will rule on the legality of the EU's trade and fisheries agreements with Morocco covering the territory of Western Sahara.
The territory has been under foreign occupation by Morocco since the 1970s, and the people of the territory has an internationally recognised right to self-determination and decolonisation.
The EU has entered into the two mentioned agreements covering the territory with the government of Morocco, which has no international mandate to be present in Western Sahara. The agreements were obtained by the EU without first obtaining the consent of the people of the non-self-governing territory.
Polisario, representing the Saharawi people, issued today a press release regarding the information about the Court's upcoming decision. A hearing took place in the Luxembourg court on 2-3 March this year.
Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) in December 2020 issued a report detailing how the EU Commission misled the other EU institutions into believing it had honoured earlier decisions by the same court. The Court decided in 2016 and in 2018 that Western Sahara cannot be included in the EU-Morocco agreements.
See timelines here of the Western Sahara legal cases that have been before the CJEU.
Polisario has a case, but it should be pursued when the time is right, Court implies.
The highest Court of the European Union this morning found that EU's trade agreement with Morocco cannot be implemented in Western Sahara.
WSRW has summarised the key findings of the landmark rulings on Western Sahara of the EU Court of Justice, of 4 October 2024.
According to the EU Council, it cannot make public a legal opinion on a future EU-Morocco trade deal in occupied Western Sahara as that would "carry the risk compromising the capacity of reaching an agreement on the dossier".