Chahid El Hafed (Sahrawi Refugee Camps) 25 July 2026 (SPS) – Emmanuel Devers, legal counsel to the Frente POLISARIO before the European courts, stated on Saturday that the Sahrawi people deserve recognition for their contribution to defending international and European rule of law through their persistent legal challenges against European institutions that have violated EU and international law in their agreements with Morocco.
Speaking during the international Conference organized Saturday by the Working Group on Natural Resources and Related Legal Issues in the Sahrawi Presidency in Chahid ElHafed, Devers stressed that, thanks to the Frente POLISARIO's foresight and determination in bringing legal actions against the European Commission over trade agreements involving the exploitation of Western Sahara's natural resources, it has become the first national liberation movement to secure landmark judgments from the highest courts of the European Union.
He noted that these rulings represent not only legal victories for the Sahrawi people but also important precedents for all peoples whose natural resources are subject to unlawful exploitation. He further emphasized that the cases established another historic precedent, marking the first time a national liberation movement has successfully persuaded an international court to annul an international trade agreement.
Devers reviewed the major milestones of the Sahrawi legal campaign before the European courts, paying tribute to the late Sahrawi leaders Mohamed Abdelaziz and Mhamed Khaddad, as well as to his own father, Gilles Devers, the former legal counsel to the Frente POLISARIO. He said they possessed the vision and courage to initiate the legal proceedings in 2012, at a time when challenging the European Commission before EU courts offered no guarantee of success.
He explained that those efforts ultimately yielded a series of landmark victories, beginning with the Court of Justice of the European Union's 2016 judgment, which held that EU-Morocco agreements could apply only to the territory of Morocco and reaffirmed that Western Sahara has a separate and distinct status under international law, thereby rejecting Morocco's claims of sovereignty over the Territory.
According to Devers, subsequent judgments delivered in 2018, 2021, and most recently in 2024 further consolidated these legal gains. He noted that these rulings recognized the Frente POLISARIO's legal standing and capacity not merely its political status, to represent the Sahrawi people before the European courts, while creating unprecedented case law that no other national liberation movement has achieved within the EU judicial system.
On another hand, Devers criticized the European Commission and Morocco for extending the application of the agreements despite the Court's rulings annulling them.
He argued that such extensions constitute an implicit acknowledgment of legal defeat and, on Morocco's part, an admission that it lacks sovereignty over Western Sahara.
Had Morocco truly possessed sovereignty over the Territory, he said, it would have had no need to sidestep the Court's judgments through legal maneuvering rather than concluding agreements on that basis. (SPS)
090/500/60 (SPS)
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