Refuelling trade between the EU and Morocco can unlock great economic potential

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Tanger port, Morocco (Copyright: Tanger Med - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47919219 )

By Chakib Alj, President of the CGEM (Confédération Générale des Entreprises du Maroc – General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises). The article has been reviewed and edited by Pieter Cleppe

This week marks EU-Africa week. As most EU countries are seeing the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, the business communities of both continents will convene at the EU-Africa Business Forum, ahead of the 6th European Union – African Union summit on Thursday and Friday. As we are emerging from unprecedented disruption to our economies and societies, we now have a historic opportunity to strengthen the relationships between our continents, to help us recover and to promote the transition to a greener and more resilient future.

However, Africa and the EU can only succeed in this together. It cannot be business as usual. We are facing enormous challenges, but the relationship between Morocco and the EU can serve as an example as a template of success.

Modernizing the EU-Morocco Association Agreement

The EU-Africa Business Forum is co-hosted between African and EU business organisations, like BusinessEurope. It will feature an event to discuss the modernization of the EU-Morocco Association Agreement, signed in 1996.

Businesses must seize this opportunity to foster socio-economic prosperity. As African businesses, we share the challenges of our EU counterparts: we are operating amidst strategic and security concerns. At the same time, we share the same vision about the solutions: economic integration, free trade, sustainable growth including creating more jobs.

Morocco is a stable and reliable business partner for the EU. This was reaffirmed earlier this month by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during her trip to Morocco, but also last autumn, when the EU and Morocco issued a joint reaction to an ECJ ruling on our Association Agreement. This unity is a testament to our shared values, objectives and challenges.

The Mediterranean really is the cradle of Europe, as its commercial routes and trade between different peoples and cultures made it an early hub of globalisation. Fast forward to Morocco’s recent elections, which makes clear how Morocco is the most stable economy in the region. Voters elected liberal parties that are pro-business and pro-EU and which share common values.

Our trade partnership is already strong. Morocco is Europe’s biggest trading partner in the southern neighbourhood, accounting for a quarter of all EU trade in the region. Yet there is considerable untapped economic potential in this bilateral relationship. 

A hub to invest in Africa

By modernizing the EU-Morocco Association Agreement, we can develop new dimensions to our partnership, fostering integration of supply chains and further cooperation in several key areas. Through the liberalization of digital services and the reduction of non-trade barriers as well as the stimulation of investment and agri-food trade, EU-Morocco trade will blossom, benefiting businesses, consumers, and sustainable development – and so will EU-Africa relations.

Moroccan companies will benefit from investments and integration into the European market. European companies will have a hub to invest into Africa, a prime source of renewable energy – notably green hydrogen – to meet the EU Green Deal targets, as well as a perfect partner to strengthen the resilience of supply chains by diversifying and shortening sourcing in strategic sectors. Both the EU and Morocco would benefit from stronger relations in increasingly unstable and challenging neighbourhoods.

This is why Moroccan businesses, together with European companies represented by BusinessEurope and the European investors in Morocco of EuroCham Maroc, all see a Morocco-EU free trade area as a strategic necessity. This is what we can and should do for the economic future of the Mediterranean and EU-Africa relations.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed our vulnerabilities, it has also shown how close we are, which pushed us to retrieve our regional focus. More should be done to protect our businesses and communities from future challenges, notably the climate change threat, with the Mediterranean one of the world’s most affected regions. Modernizing trade and investment between Morocco and the EU thus serves converging objectives between the EU’s New Green Deal and Morocco’s ambitious sustainability agenda.

This week, we have a window of opportunity to kick-start work to achieve these objectives and build on the economic progress achieved in success stories like the EU-Morocco relationship. That window is wide open.

Ambitious talks could deliver a fully liberalized EU-Morocco free trade area, which would contribute to regional stability in the Mediterranean and beyond, open a gateway between Europe and Africa, and foster economic opportunity for a new generation of Moroccan and European entrepreneurs.

More importantly, this could be a model for EU-Africa trade. Just like the promoters of the African Continental Free Trade Area and the founders of the EU Single Market before them, we believe that trade, closer economic relations and integration are the way forward.

Let us choose that shared path!

 

 

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