For several years, well before the official announcement of its support for the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, France has been intensifying its exploitation of the natural resources of the Sahrawi territory, occupied since 1975 by the Moroccan colonizer.
De facto encouraging the colonial status quo, Paris tramples on international law, allowing several of its companies to continue the systematic plundering of the resources and raw materials of this territory.
As an economic lever of the Bayrou government, the French Development Agency has released more than 150 million euros in projects in occupied Western Sahara. These investments were made in flagrant violation of European law, exposing themselves to appeals before the European and French courts. Because Paris has known since October 2024 that the Court of Justice of the European Union has invalidated all trade agreements linking the EU to Morocco, the occupying power. The legal rulings now serve as a reference, and several EU member countries apply them rigorously and impose them on their companies.
In this regard, the Center for Analysis of Western Sahara (CASO) urged France this Tuesday to respect “scrupulously” international and European law, warning against any complicity in the plundering of the natural resources of the Sahrawi people or violation of their right to self-determination.
In a statement, CASO called on “France and all French public institutions to scrupulously respect international and European law, under penalty of France being directly implicated in complicity in the plundering of Sahrawi resources and the violation of the right to self-determination.”
In this regard, the center denounced “forcefully” the “partial and misleading” treatment by a French public channel, which broadcast a television report touting a supposed “spectacular economic development” of Western Sahara thanks to Moroccan investments.
It recalled, in this context, that Western Sahara is a non-self-governing territory listed by the UN since 1963 on the list of territories to be decolonized.
Morocco, it continued, “does not exercise any recognized sovereignty there, and its occupation is illegal under international law, as recalled by the International Court of Justice (Advisory Opinion, 1975) and multiple UN resolutions.”
It also highlighted the various decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), in particular the judgments of October 4, 2024, invalidating the EU-Morocco trade agreements due to the inclusion of Western Sahara without the consent of the Sahrawi people.
The AFD (French Development Agency), which has strongly engaged in the plundering of Sahrawi resources, has acted in flagrant violation of European law. Therefore, according to CASO’s warning, it is exposed to appeals before the European and French courts.
CASO stressed, in this regard, that “any financing of economic activities in this territory without the agreement of the Polisario Front, the only representative of the Sahrawi people recognized by the UN, is likely to be deemed illegal and give rise to sanctions.”