Next Friday, the European Commission will formally ask the EU-governments for a mandate to negotiate a 12-month extension of the EU-Moroccan fisheries agreement (FPA) on current terms. Read: one more year of paying Morocco to fish in non-Moroccan waters.
On Monday, the European Parliament's committee for International Trade decided to delay the ratification-process of the EU-Moroccan agricultural agreement due to legal ambiguities.
The EU ambassador does not know which independent institutions he himself referred to in May last year, in support of the EU fisheries agreement in Western Sahara. Yesterday, 2 Swedish students met with the embassy in Rabat, and got an answer that the EU has so far not been willing to respond to.
According to Moroccan police, foreign visitors are not allowed to talk with Saharawi. Several foreign groups have been expelled from Western Sahara or Morocco the last weeks after meeting with local people. This student was kicked out few hours after meeting a network of Saharawi ladies whose sons have disappeared, on 29 January 2011.
The Spanish agrarian organisation COAG is convinced that the impending EU-Moroccan agricultural trade liberalisation agreement could be illegal for implicitly including Western Sahara. COAG has now condemned French company Azura’s presence in the occupied territories.
For the third consecutive day, Saharawi fishermen have been protesting in the harbour of Boujdour, demanding the right to fish in their own waters. Since Monday, Moroccan police officers have been preventing the Saharawi from accessing their boats.
This is how wide you smile when you contribute to the continued illegal occupation of a country.
"We have still time to influence so that the waters offshore Western Sahara are left outside of the agreement", writes columnist Helena Olsson in Finland's largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, on the unethical EU fisheries.
Morocco keeps exploring and marketing its uranium potential in Western Sahara, despite the fact it is in violation of international law.
In December 2010, the long term agreement between the Mexican phosphate importer Innophos and the Moroccan phosphate company OCP expired. The trade has been going on for 18 years, and it is not known whether arrangements have been made to continue the cooperation. The firm has not yet responded to questions WSRW sent in October regarding the unethical purchases from the occupied territory.
