France Urged to Mend Ties with Morocco Amid Security and Diplomatic Tensions

"Beyond that, through its effective collaboration in the judicial and intelligence fields, Morocco directly participates in the security of the states of the northern Mediterranean, including ours. And yet, while the partnership seems a pragmatic obviousness, something has been broken since 2017 between Rabat and the Élysée. We know the tension that exists between Rabat and Algiers, mainly born of the instrumentalization by Algeria of the still pending UN issue of Western Sahara," writes Christophe Boutin, a political scientist and professor of public law in Caen, in an op-ed published in Le Journal du Dimanche. While the "governments of Jacques Chirac or Nicolas Sarkozy maintained a balance between a true partnership with Morocco and often more strained contacts with an unstable Algeria," the French president "Emmanuel Macron has yielded to all the demands, symbolic or not, of an Algerian power that remains trapped in a victimary flight forward and demands our eternal repentance," he notes.

"Is it to please this power whose collapse some seem to fear?" questions the French political scientist, recalling that the consequences of the choices of the French president: "diplomatic faults have followed one another, shocking a Moroccan elite attached to the historical ties that unite our two countries." If "France continues to support at the UN the autonomy plan proposed by the Kingdom to put an end to the Sahara issue, and which is undoubtedly today the best solution," Christophe Boutin believes that "a real work remains to be done to regain the indispensable relationship of trust that the choices of the French president have undermined, from his refusal to engage more in the recognition of Moroccan sovereignty to his false familiarity with the sovereign, displayed in statements later denied by Rabat."

Going back in history, the French political scientist recalls: "Even under the protectorate, the dialogue between France and Morocco remained that of two states whose roots are in ancient history: these are two millennial nations, and the current dynasty reigned when Louis XIV was leading France." And to deduce: "These are therefore not ’these territories’ with vague components whose progressivism likes to organize a ’governance’ that always wants to be ’fluid’ but is only fluctuating. The record of the quarter-century reign of Mohammed VI amply proves it: it is because he knows where he comes from that Morocco knows where it is going." He hopes that his country, which "will regain this same foundation, will be able to renew the dialogue with him, for the latter is today more than ever necessary." And to conclude: "The bond that unites Morocco, a major geopolitical player, to France appears as an evidence and must be restored".