Morocco, Spain agree to reopen custom posts after a 5 year suffocating closure

Foreign ministers of Morocco and Spain agreed on Wednesday to reopen Ceuta and Melila custom posts in January 2023, after a five years halt that dealt a heavy economic blow to both the Spanish enclave and northern Moroccan cities.

In a sideline meeting during the UN General Assembly, Nasser Bourita and José Manuel Albares “agreed to work so that the orderly and gradual passage of goods through land customs posts begins in January.”

The reopening of the customs posts in Ceuta and Melilla closed since in 2018, set out to be one of the most important issues that the two nations agreed to resolve in the joint declaration signed between the government of Pedro Sánchez and Morocco in May.

The Morocco-imposed closure sought to combat contraband smuggling into Morocco that cost the national economy up to 12.5 billion dirhams annually while Spain gained 700 million euros in profits.

Efforts have since been made to combat the illegal flow of goods.

‘Next step’

Albares referred to a “new stage” in relations between Madrid and Rabat, adding that the meeting with Bourita served as an opportunity to establish the bases for the “next steps”.

“We have an intense bilateral program covering all aspects of our bilateral relationship, based on transparency, permanent communication, and mutual respect. These are the principles of sincere cooperation between two strategic partners like Spain and Morocco”, said the head of Spanish diplomacy at the end of his talks with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, African Cooperation and Moroccans Abroad, Nasser Bourita, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

“We have made more than significant progress, from which the Moroccan and Spanish peoples are already benefiting”, he said with satisfaction, referring to the resumption of air, sea, and land connections, “which has also enabled thousands of families to be reunited this summer thanks to this operation after these years of pandemics”.

He also underlined having agreed with his Moroccan counterpart to hold a high-level meeting before the end of the year in order to take stock and to continue to move forward together and to reaffirm Spanish-Moroccan friendship.”