Ten Moroccan associations blasted the “discriminatory” conditions and “humiliating treatment” for Moroccan visa applicants from European countries. In an open letter criticizing the visa policy of European countries, they address France in particular.
No less than ten associations, including the National Authority for Youth and Democracy (INJD), which brings together 16 young people from Moroccan political parties, the Prometheus Institute for Democracy and Human Rights, the Moroccan League for the Defense of Human Rights (LMDH) and the Moroccan Forum of Young Journalists (FMJJ) have called on European countries to review their ways of granting Visas.
“The right to free movement is taken hostage”, protest the associations which recall that the measure taken for example by France to reduce by 50% the Visas granted to Moroccans is “a measure of regressive reprisals” and a ” inadmissible punishment”.
Several criticisms are addressed to the European representations in Morocco, including “the procedural inflation and the multiplication of categories and sub-categories organized in cases, which weighs down the visa application procedures by making them more obsolete, opaque and open to the scam of services interposed for the processing of requests”.
The associations explain that the “examination times which remain extremely variable” and the “endless” waiting times despite assurances to the contrary, and denounce “the use of private operators who replace the French administration, who are not remunerated by the French State, but by the applicants themselves” and disapproved that the costs of rejected files (with the exception of those presenting missing documents) are paid for a service which is not rendered.
Among the grievances retained, the letter from the associations finally speaks of “outsourcing the processing of visa applicants’ files does not fully guarantee the protection and security of personal data and in particular biometric identifiers”.