Morocco Agreement A Financial Loser For EU

A classified report now shows that the EU also loses out economically in the agreement, according to the news site Europaportalen.

Swedish online newspaper Europaportalen reports that they have read a classified report which concludes that the Morocco agreement is the EU’s worst fisheries deal economically.

Since 2007, the EU pays 36.1 million euro to Morocco every year for access to Moroccan waters. Two consultancy firms have been engaged by the European Commission to evaluate the Morocco fisheries agreement. Europaportalen reports that the evaluation shows that for every euro payed, the EU gets 65 cents in return. This value includes 780 jobs that are kept in the European fisheries sector. If the 36.1 million euro is divided by the number of jobs created, this means that the EU pays more than 45,000 euro per job.

The classified report says that in terms of fishing capacity 74 percent of the European fleet is located in the southern area. This could be interpreted as Western Sahara.

In the fisheries agreement, 13.5 million euro is earmarked for the support of Moroccan sectoral fisheries policy in order to promote sustainability in its waters. However, only 15 percent of the money available was used to develop Moroccan fisheries and the report concludes that the program for modernising the Moroccan fishing fleet is a failure, according to Europaportalen.

The Commission recently negotiated a one-year extension of the Morocco agreement. The European Parliament and the Council have to approve this extension and are expected to vote on the issue soon.