NASDAQ
By Laurence Norman
BRUSSELS–The European Union said Monday it will appeal a ruling by one of the bloc’s top courts striking down an EU-Morocco trade agreement as the North African country’s foreign minister warned the decision could threaten broad bilateral ties.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the bloc had agreed to challenge last Thursday’s decision by the EU’s second highest court.
She said the EU would ensure that in the meantime the trade pact, which lowered tariffs on Moroccan agricultural exports to the bloc, stayed in effect.
The EU’s “international commitments will be respected,” Ms. Mogherini said, underlining the importance of the EU’s ties with the North African country.
In Thursday’s judgment, the General Court partly upheld a challenge to the bilateral 2012 farm trade deal brought by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, which fights for independence for the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
The court said the EU hadn’t carried out its duties to ensure it considered all aspects of the trade deal, including its impact on the fundamental rights of the people of Western Sahara and who controls the region’s natural resources.
Western Sahara, a disputed territory, has been under Morocco’s control since 1976. The region is specifically excluded from some of the country’s trade deals with other western countries.
The court’s ruling has sowed doubts about other EU-Morocco trade deals and sowed concerns about the fate of current negotiations on a new, deeper commercial pact between the EU and Morocco.
At a news conference on Monday in Brussels, Morocco’s Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar urged the bloc to move swiftly to fix what he called an internal problem for the bloc.
He said the court’s ruling had raised “entirely legitimate questions” about the future of EU-Morocco ties.
“This is a dangerous precedent. It is not useful to a relationship which has been built up step by step with determination for more than 20 years, ” he said.
The 2012 trade deal lowered tariffs on dozens of Moroccan agricultural exports to the EU in exchange for eventual scrapping of tariffs on some European exports to the North African countries. The agreement was part of EU efforts to encourage democratic reforms in the region following the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.
Western Sahara activists said at the time of the deal it would expand exports from plantations in the region controlled by foreign companies and by the Moroccan king.
The EU has broad ties with Morocco on trade, political and security matters. Moroccan authorities stepped up cooperation with Belgium and France law enforcement bodies in the wake of the Paris terror attacks last month.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
