Spain and Morocco hold first summit in eight years

Spain and Morocco hold their first summit in eight years to strengthen their economic ties.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and 12 members of his cabinet will meet their counterparts in Rabat to sign up to 20 agreements aimed at boosting trade and investment.

The two countries are building on a diplomatic ceasefire reached last year over migration and territory disputes.

Morocco is Spain’s largest trading partner with trade between the two countries worth €17 billion by 2022.

There have been regular diplomatic crises between the two countries, most recently the storming by 8,000 migrants of Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in 2021 after Morocco eased border controls.

Sanchez restored relations with Rabat in March 2022 after reversing a 40-year policy on Western Sahara by supporting Morocco’s proposal to create an autonomous region.

Spain relies on Morocco to control the migration of Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans seeking to cross the European Union’s southernmost border.

Last June, Moroccan law enforcement officers crushed an attempted mass border crossing into Melilla, Spain’s other North African enclave, killing at least 23 people and injuring dozens.

An investigation into that incident remains open, but Madrid has welcomed a general drop in migration rates, both to the Spanish archipelago and via the Western Mediterranean route.

The number of illegal arrivals in the Canary Islands is down 30% in 2022 compared to a year earlier, according to the Interior Ministry.

Sanchez’s socialist party recently voted against a resolution in the European Parliament calling on Morocco to improve its record on press freedom.

Juan Fernando Lopez, a MEP for the Socialist Party, said compromise is sometimes necessary to maintain cordial relations with a neighbour, arguing that “if you have to swallow a toad, you swallow it”.