Relations between Morocco and Spain can only be a state policy, assured the head of Spanish diplomacy, José Manuel Albares, explaining that Morocco is an important country for Spain.
Morocco is a country of “crucial importance” for Spain and Europe, he stressed, recalling that the new relationship between the two countries is the result of a state policy.
“We are going to continue this work in a climate of calm, serenity, in accordance with the roadmap that we have agreed together, to consolidate it, to make it irreversible”, declared the Spanish minister before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Spanish, during a session devoted to the priorities of Spain’s foreign policy in 2023.
This intervention came to reassure all political sides of the solidity of this new relationship which is not subject to change, even if the PSOE (party in power) were to lose the legislative elections. Thus, the position of Spain on the subject of the Moroccan Sahara which recognizes that the autonomy plan is the most serious solution, the most realistic and the most likely to bring peace to the Sahara is immutable.
“The roadmap that we have drawn up with Morocco is progressing at the established pace, as both parties have seen,” Albares said, recalling the High Level Meeting (RHN) held on February 1 and 2. in Rabat, the first for eight years and the first to take place in Morocco for 11 years.
This HLM “has given rise to the largest number of agreements in 30 years of high-level meetings with Morocco”, i.e. around twenty, he explained, adding that many important agreements have been signed to continue to support the presence of Spanish companies in Morocco.
These companies, “with approximately 12,000 million euros in exports and 20,000 million in global trade in 2022, is already our third market outside the European Union, behind the United States and the United Kingdom”, also adding that more than 1,100 small and medium-sized Spanish companies have commercial ties with Morocco.
He then addressed the other strategic sectors that have been the subject of agreements between Madrid and Rabat, “in which Spain has experience and competitive capacity, such as water, infrastructure and railways , and in which Morocco plans large investments in the future, up to 40 billion euros in railways in the coming years and nearly 14 billion euros in water until 2027”, he noted during his speech.
He also spoke of the cultural aspect, saying that the two companies must “know each other better”, and that is why an agreement to establish new bilingual sections in Moroccan schools with a potential of up to 100 schools was signed in over the construction of a new Spanish public high school in Rabat”.
Finally, the assessment of bilateral cooperation in the fight against illegal immigration and terrorist cells is well established, despite “a very difficult regional context, the most difficult for several decades”.