The meeting of the governments of Spain and Morocco, which has been postponed many times due to diplomatic clashes with the Alawite kingdom, will finally be held in Rabat on February 1 and 2, as confirmed to him on Wednesday by Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares. Arrival in Niger for an official visit. The High-Level Meeting (RAN) will be a meeting of Spanish Government President Pedro Sánchez and a dozen ministers with their Moroccan counterparts, paralyzed by his withdrawal after months of disagreement, to unblock key issues on the common agenda. The avalanche of thousands of migrants tolerated by the Moroccan ambassador in Spain and the Moroccan police in Ceuta. the king awaits Mohammed VI Become part of RAN. The Moroccan Government delegation will be headed by Chief Executive Officer Aziz Akhannouch.
Among other issues, the restoration of regular human and commercial traffic at the borders of Ceuta and Melilla, which were tightly closed during these years, should also be addressed. one of the unknown customs rate will be created or renewed in both Autonomous Cities. Among other things, Morocco wants to limit the volume of traffic allowed to Spain, fearing that Spanish ports will compete with other Moroccan ports such as the massive Tanger Med. you want to end the traditional retail trade, performed by so-called “porters” who cross the land border in large bales for resale. One of the hottest issues is the delimitation of the waters between the Moroccan coast and the Canary Islands, which was discussed in one of the working groups formed after the re-establishment of diplomatic relations last March.
Following Sánchez’s decision to support Morocco’s solution to the occupied Western Sahara (granting him only autonomy, instead of a self-determination referendum supported by the Sahrawis and the United Nations), Rabat decided to resend its ambassador to Madrid. He withdrew after Spain allowed Morocco’s arch-enemy, Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali, to cure covid at a hospital in Logroño. Following this move, the Alaouite kingdom encouraged the illegal mass entry of thousands of immigrants, most of them underage, into Ceuta. The crisis was sealed in a letter: Pedro Sánchez’s letter to the King of Morocco in March this year assured him with astonishment that Rabat’s pro-autonomy proposal for the Sahara was “the most serious, convincing and realistic” to solve the problem. historical dispute over the former Spanish colony.
VI in April. Mohamed invited Sánchez to Rabat, which will be his first official visit, and where a joint decision was made that determined the roadmap between the two countries. This will be the basis for the February RAN, which aims at “the full normalization of the movement of people and goods, including the appropriate customs and human control devices at land and sea level”. “ has already been reset.throat crossing operation”, the annual return of thousands of Moroccans who have settled in Europe. It will also try to gradually restore all frequencies of sea passenger connections. Among the many open fringes are standardization and “management of airspaces”.
One of the most important key points highlighted by the head of Spanish diplomacy in recent months is the control of irregular migration, which is largely dependent on the will of the Moroccan police. In this sense, the parties undertake to “restart and strengthen cooperation in the field of migration”. Hispano-Moroccan Permanent Group About migrations.
RAN was performed periodically until the last one, 2015. Due to another pandemic scheduled for December 2020, it was postponed to February 2021, which was also suspended. Until that time, Pedro Sánchez had not yet paid an official visit to the Alevi kingdom. and government partner, Pablo Iglesias had spoken to defend the independence of Western Sahara. So February will be the first summit in eight years with a large part of both governments. In it, bilateral relations will be launched for the next decades. Meanwhile, energy giant Algeria observes and maintains the diplomatic and trade blockade of Spanish companies; this is a diplomatic retaliation and there is no possibility of closure yet.