Tarascon Court Ruling Confirms Relevance of Morocco’s Public Policies in Southern Provinces – Economist

Tarascon Court’s ruling to condemn the Confédération Paysanne, a French trade union organization involved in the legal harassment of the Moroccan-EU agricultural agreement, “is a recognition of the wisdom of the public policies implemented in the southern provinces of the Kingdom,” said economist Abderrazak El Hiri. “Such a decision testifies to Morocco’s credibility as a reliable partner of the European Union, confirms its geopolitical weight and confirms the soundness of its economic and social choices,” the professor and researcher at the Faculty of Legal, Economic and Social Sciences (FSJES) in Fez told MAP. El Hiri, who is also the director of the Laboratoire de Coordination des Études et des Recherches en Analyses et Prévisions économiques (CERAPE), returned to the report published by the European Union in 2022, stressing that the Morocco-EU Agricultural Agreement, which entered into force on July 19, 2019, fully benefits the population of the Kingdom’s southern provinces. “It is an agreement that is not only a framework for the development of agricultural trade between the two parties, but also and above all a factor in the promotion of income and job-generating activities, a framework of attractiveness for investment and therefore an impetus for economic growth in these provinces,” he noted. Last Tuesday, the Court of Tarascon ruled against the Confédération Paysanne, which had sought to prohibit IDYL, a French company specializing in the marketing of fruit and vegetables from Morocco, including the southern provinces, from distributing its products. This latest French judicial rejection comes just a few weeks after the one issued by the High Court in London against Polisario supporters in the United Kingdom.