CEE Alliance rejects new agreement between EU and Morocco, announces it will ensure sovereign rights of Sahrawi people are respected

Budapest, 7 October 2025 (SPS) - The Central and Eastern European Alliance for Solidarity with the Saharawi People(CEE Alliance)  has strongly  condemned the new agreement between the EU and Morocco and announced that it will use all appropriate means to ensure that the sovereign rights of the Sahrawi people are respected, in a statement on Monday.

The full text of the statement:

“The Central and Eastern European Alliance for Solidarity with the Saharawi People(CEE Alliance)  strongly  condemns the new agreement between the EU and Morocco and announces that it will use all appropriate means to ensure that the sovereign rights of the Sahrawi people are respected.

According to an official statement released in Bir Lehlou on 03/10/2025, the EU Council has decided to sign a new agreement with the Kingdom of Morocco on tariff preferences for products originating in occupied Western Sahara, with provisional application. This agreement is intended to replace the 2018 agreement, which was annulled by the European Court of Justice. As the representatives of the CEE Alliance for Solidarity with the Saharawi people  we firmly reject this new agreement, which is contrary to international law and directly violates the Court's ruling.

In its judgment of December 21, 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Western Sahara is a territory separate and distinct from the Kingdom of Morocco and that any agreement applicable to it requires the consent of the Saharawi people, regardless of the alleged benefits. In its judgment of October 4, 2024, the Court confirmed that the consent of the Sahrawi people is the only condition for the validity of any legal act of the European Union concerning Western Sahara, and this time explicitly recognized the right of the POLISARIO Front to take legal action under international law to protect the sovereign rights of the Saharawi people over their national territory and natural resources.

Given the force of the principles established in the Court's case law, the illegality of the new agreement is obvious. In five days, without the knowledge of the Saharawi people, it was negotiated and imposed on the Member States by written procedure, with provisional application, in order to deprive the European Parliament of its power and present it with a fait accompli. In essence, they decided to amend EU legislation to adapt it to the illegal occupation of Western Sahara by the Kingdom of Morocco.

This led to the invention of the concept of „region of origin”, which is an unprecedented departure from the generally accepted concept of „country of origin”, while the Commission committed itself to supporting the Moroccan agricultural industry by directly financing desalination plants in the occupied territory. In the short term, this means the destruction of European agricultural sectors that are already struggling with current export volumes and to which the Sahrawi people have always been opposed. With this new agreement, the EU is providing the Moroccan occupiers with the means to maintain their illegal presence in the occupied territories through repression and systematic violations of fundamental rights, thereby continuing their colonial aggression against the Saharawi people.

Instead of initiating direct negotiations with the POLISARIO Front, which was the only way to ensure compliance with the Court's ruling, the European Commission continues to act unlawfully, forcing the EU to repeat the mistakes of the past. But this brutal approach is in fact an acknowledgment of the nervousness of the Moroccan occupiers, who are trying to gain a few months' respite, when everyone knows that European intervention is a dead end, rejected by the Court's rulings.

Bolstered by the 2024 rulings upholding the Saharawi people's access to European justice, the POLISARIO Front announces that it will resolutely and prudently exhaust all appropriate legal avenues. Recognizing the progress made since 2012, the Saharawi people look forward to this new phase with the utmost serenity. In the meantime, with the ratification process underway, the CEE Alliance for the Solidaeity with the Saharawi People, solemnly calls on the European authorities to reject this new agreement, which violates the right to self-determination and destabilizes the UN process by encouraging the Moroccan occupiers to make reckless advances. In Western Sahara, as elsewhere, respect for the UN Charter and international law is necessary to achieve lasting peace.

Budapest, 6thOctober 2025.

Matyas Benyik

 President

On behalf of CEE Alliance”