Morocco is a key to implement the EU's neighbourhood policy
by Youssef Abdu Noor
10 March 2023
M. Oliver Varhelyi, arrived in the Moroccan capital Rabat to meet Nasser Bourita, the North African nation's foreign minister. That has just happened weeks after the visit of the EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, the European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy.
M. Oliver Varhelyi's visit was the latest in a series of bilateral meetings aimed at consolidating Morocco's place as a strategic partner of the EU as the country of 37 million people continues to keep a privileged place on the political agenda of the European officials.
Morocco is a key interlocutor for the European Union, due to its geographic and political position at the nexus of the Atlantic, southern Mediterranean and North Africa, and also his EU advanced Status.
The diplomatic step between top officials in Rabat and Brussels' bureaucrats has set lofty goals for the two sides. These developments come on the heels of a number of high-level visits, including by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to Rabat in 2022. The talks have helped strengthen the relationship between the EU and the Kingdom of Morocco, while at the same time helping to usher in an unparalleled deepening of the two sides' bilateral cooperation.
Partially as a result of the upheavals in the wider Middle East, Morocco has positioned and developed itself as an indisputable oasis of social and economic stability in a part of the world where such claims are few and far between; a fact that is not lost on Europe's more clear-eyed politicians. Morocco's energy, migration, security, counter-terrorism, climate and education policies are all issues that form the basis of its relationships with Europe. The EU's trade with Morocco already amounts to roughly €44billion.
The 'green partnership' that has been developed between Rabat and Brussels is the first of its kind to be signed with a country that is not a member of the EU.
Since its return to the African Union in 2017, Morocco has become an essential link between the northern and southern Mediterranean to sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the Maghreb. This has led to a simple maxim in Brussels' foreign affairs policies – Morocco must be regarded, particularly with regard to its southern flank, as an indispensable nation in the EU's Neighbourhood Policy.