Morocco Condemns EU Farmers’ Attacks on Produce Trucks, Defends Trade Agreement

Denouncing "unfair competition" from Morocco, farmers in some European Union countries have attacked trucks carrying Moroccan fruits and vegetables and proceeded to destroy them. During the press conference jointly hosted with his French counterpart visiting Rabat, Nasser Bourita spoke on this subject. "If we only talk about agriculture, the European Union has a surplus with Morocco of nearly 600 million euros and it is the European Union that exports the most agricultural products to Morocco (cereals and others). And so today, putting pressure on southern products is not fair," he said.

The head of Moroccan diplomacy specified that within the framework of the association agreement with Morocco, the European Union has made a surplus of 10 billion euros, indicating that these figures show that "free trade cannot be à la carte". Nasser Bourita also wanted to warn against "dangerous shortcuts". "We are presented with the European Union as a kind of sieve where everything enters without problem, yet we have negotiated quotas, phytosanitary standards, and the European Union has been very picky about the conditions. Today we are making shortcuts to pose a problem more of political perception than of trade problems," he insisted.

"What worries us the most is this geopolitics of fear that prevails today in the Mediterranean, and this geopolitics of rejection that is comfortably settling in," the Moroccan minister also stressed, recalling that this trend had been noted with regard to migrants. "We see it, and it is even more dangerous, the protectionist rumblings. (We saw it) with humans, now we see it in goods," he deplored.