The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, visits Morocco again six years after having inaugurated, together with King Mohamed VI, the first African high-speed railway line, along which French-made trains circulate. The president is scheduled to be received this Monday at the royal palace in Rabat by the monarch of the Alawite dynasty, with whom he will then attend the signing ceremony of several bilateral agreements. Macron arrives accompanied by nine ministers of his Government, including those of Defense and Interior, and by fifty large French businessmen three months after having recognized in a letter to Mohamed VI that the autonomy plan defended by Morocco is the “ only solution” for the Western Sahara conflict, whose future contemplates “within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty.”
To seal reconciliation with Morocco after three years of deep diplomatic crisis, France has gone further than Spain in its approach to the Rabat thesis — which was established by defining it in 2022 as “the most serious, realistic and credible basis” to solve the conflict—and almost as much as the United States, which in 2020 recognized Rabat’s sovereignty over the territory of the former Spanish colony. The United Nations classifies it as a “non-autonomous territory” or pending decolonization. The Polisario Front, backed by Algeria and which controls 20% of its surface, demands the independence of Western Sahara after a self-determination referendum.
Macron’s state visit, which will last three days, puts an end to France’s distancing from Morocco, a former colonial power, the leading investor in the Moroccan economy, and the second largest trading partner, only behind Spain, after having doubled the volume of exchanges in the last decade. Paris’ decision to halve the number of visas granted to Moroccan citizens in 2021, in retaliation for Rabat’s refusal to accept the return of expelled irregular migrants, strained diplomatic ties to the maximum. The following year, the French president’s official visit to Algeria, Morocco’s regional rival, aggravated the disagreement.
Furthermore, suspicions that a Macron mobile phone had been the target of Moroccan espionage through the Israeli-made Pegasus program poisoned ties that until then had been described as historic. When the French Government announced a year ago the sending of humanitarian aid for the victims of the earthquake that shook the Atlas Mountains, the Moroccan authorities turned their backs on the offer, while accepting the presence of Spanish rescue teams.
2030 Soccer World Cup
Mutual security and economic interests have contributed to accelerating the reconciliation process until it culminates in the official trip that Macron is now undertaking. The Elysée, according to the Moroccan press, has organized the visit “with the ambition of renewing a strategic partnership in the coming decades.” France thus offers to “accompany Morocco (…) with the experience acquired in the recent Olympic Games in Paris” in the large infrastructure projects related to the 2030 Soccer World Cup, which it co-organizes with Spain and Portugal.
Among the business leaders accompanying the French president are the train manufacturing company Alstom, which aspires to revalidate its presence on the new 450-kilometre Kenitra-Marrakesh high-speed line, which should enter service in 2030. Morocco has A program to modernize its railways is underway through the acquisition of 168 trains, 18 of which will be high-speed, with a budget of more than 14,000 million euros. The Spanish companies Talgo and CAF have also participated in these contests. Other presidents and CEOs of large French industrial and service corporations with a presence in the Moroccan economy, such as Airbus, TotalEnergies, Veolia or Suez, also accompany the president.
“France is going to reaffirm its commitment to an essential issue [la del Sáhara Occidental] for the national security of Morocco,” a source from the French presidency told the press last week. Macron is scheduled to give a speech on Tuesday before Parliament in Rabat, in the same rostrum where Mohamed VI thanked him on the 11th for his “clear support” for Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara, an issue that he considered the “first national cause” of the Maghreb country.
A first non-political step already advanced by French diplomacy is the contribution of French companies to the economic development of Western Sahara, “for the benefit of the local population and in accordance with international law.” Contracts are already planned, for the first time with direct investments and a foreseeable presence of employees, such as the so-called “electric highway” to connect the territory of the former Spanish colony with the Moroccan network.
Ministerial contacts
While Macron attends a state dinner hosted by the king, meets with representatives of culture or receives representatives of the French colony in Morocco, estimated at 50,000 residents and with a thousand established companies, his ministers will hold sectoral conversations. The French press points to contacts for an eventual sale of French weapons to the Moroccan Armed Forces; the regulation of the “legal mobility” of workers and the control of migratory pressure; the measures against drought in agriculture, or the strengthening of the teaching of the French language, the use of which has been relegated among the younger generations, who have opted for English as their preferred language, despite the fact that Morocco continues to be the fourth country with the largest French-speaking population, with 13 million speakers.
After turning the page of disagreements, and after the giftLast July, by turning over the Sahara in the middle of the Moroccan Throne Festival, in which Mohamed VI celebrated the 25th anniversary of his arrival to power, Macron went to Rabat to assert the unquestionable weight of France in Morocco. For this reason, he reminded him in his letter three months ago of “the permanent French position in favor of Moroccan national security (…) in the international field”, in a clear reference to his country’s condition as a permanent member of the Security Council of the UN and central state of the EU. France, which has been formally supporting the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Sahara since 2007, now seals reconciliation through the implicit recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the former Spanish colony to consolidate itself as a strategic ally and preferred partner.
