Spanish Party Urges EU Action After Morocco Expels MEPs from Western Sahara

Last week, six MEPs - including the Spaniard Serra Sanchez Isabelle, a deputy of the Spanish party Podemos and an active pro-Polisario member - were asked to take the same flight by which they had tried to enter the Moroccan Sahara. Annoyed, the spokeswoman of the Spanish party, Isa Serra, the MEPs Catarina Martins (Portugal) and Jussi Saramo (Finland) addressed a letter to the President of the European Council, António Costa, to the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, and to the Vice-President of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas, to denounce this expulsion. They are asking the EU to take action against Morocco.

These pro-separatist parliamentarians wanted to go to Morocco to verify compliance with the recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which annulled the agricultural and fisheries agreements between the EU and Morocco, and tried to forcibly enter Laâyoune before being turned back to Las Palmas. The only problem is that they did not have authorization and were not mandated by the European Parliament, and did not have the necessary authorizations from the Moroccan authorities either.

According to lawyer Mourad Elajouti, Morocco did not act wrongly in asking the MEPs to take the flight back in the opposite direction, because "international law is explicit: each state is the sole master of access to its territory". "Any unauthorized attempt at entry constitutes a violation of national sovereignty and a transgression of international conventions," he explained to Hespress. According to the lawyer’s explanations, the Moroccan authorities applied "their laws in full compliance with international standards". To support his argument, Elajouti cites Law No. 02-03 on immigration, which provides that access to the territory may be refused to any person whose presence constitutes a threat to public order.