Statement by Mr. Ramtane LAMAMRA,

Minister of Foreign Affairs

and the National Community Abroad

on the cancellation of the agricultural and fisheries agreements

concluded between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco

The Court of the European Union has just pronounced the annulment of the agricultural and fisheries agreements concluded between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco, based on the principle of self-determination and the requirement of the consent of the people of Western Sahara through the free expression of its legitimate representative, the Polisario Front.

This is a decisive victory for the legitimate cause of the Saharawi people. Firstly, through the recognition of the representativeness of the Polisario Front by the highest judicial authority of the European Union, which gives it the capacity to act before the Court of the Union. Secondly, through the cancellation of the two agreements concluded in violation of the obligation to obtain the free and genuine consent of the Saharawi people, which derives directly from the separate and distinct status of the territory of Western Sahara as a territory eligible for self-determination in accordance with international law.

This major double breakthrough enshrined in European jurisprudence, constitutes a historic achievement that will henceforth conclusively on all the member countries of the European Union and its institutions in their relations with Morocco as an occupying State. This sentence also opens a new stage in the struggle of the people of Western Sahara for the exercise of their absolute and non-negotiable right to self-determination. In the sense that it constitutes a certain reference point for the International organisations involved in the search for a solution to the Western Sahara conflict that guarantees the right of the Saharawi people to autonomy. In line with the status of Western Sahara, represented by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as a founding member of the African Union, this new legal consecration of its international personality has the defining effect of reducing to nothing the expansionist pretensions of the Kingdom of Morocco.

At the same time, this verdict of the European Court of Justice indicates to the United Nations Security Council the path that the completion of the Decolonization of Western Sahara must imperatively follow. Faced with an illegal occupation of Sahrawi territories and the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources over which the people of Western Sahara have exclusive and permanent sovereignty, the Security Council is more than ever called upon to engage its authority in the promotion and protection of the national rights of the people of Western Sahara.