Polisario attempts negotiating 'fishing licences' in Western Sahara waters with Canary Islands

With only nine remaining days to go before the expiry of the fishing agreement between Morocco and the European Union, the Polisario has already initiated attempts to offer Spain fishing licenses for Western Sahara waters.

This Friday, the Canary Islands are hosting a meeting between representatives of the separatist Front and the archipelago’s shipowners, devoted to examining this issue, as they eye securing a bilateral exploitation agreement.

“We are willing to find a legal framework for the shipowners to continue their activity. They are victims of an illegal agreement between Morocco and the European Union,” Abddellah Arabi, the Polisario’s representative in Spain, told Spanish outlet El Independiente.

“We are willing to sit down with the fishermen and with the companies working in these waters. We have closer relations with this region,” claimed Arabi.

Back in June, the Polisario lawyer had already declared at a press briefing in Madrid that the separatists were intending on entering talks with the Canary Islands’ shipowners, saying: “We are reaching out to the Spanish government to conclude a fisheries agreement now. There is no need to wait for the verdict.”

The lawless separatist front, accustom to transgressing laws governing international relations and trade, maintains its attempts to bypass the appeal verdict from the European Court of Justice..

The Front is relying on the verdict of the Court of Justice of the European Union  dating back to September 29, 2021, which advises Spain to open negotiations on fisheries.

As the Polisario continues to feint a legitimacy it desperately lacks, political analysts speaking to Hespress assure that this move is nothing but “performance and flashiness,” through which the  Front is trying to show off the lengths it is willing to go, to hinder Morocco’s progress on the Sahara file.

Charifa Lemouir, a political analyst, told Hespress that “the only effect that the Front can create in the file is talking without diplomatic awareness about the ‘scenario of not renewing the agreement,’ based on the absence of negotiations on the matter until the hour when it is nearing its end.”

“This is in the event that the Kingdom of Morocco does not initiate an explicit reaction towards its northern partners that is necessary, applying its full sovereignty over the integrity of its land,” concluded the expert.

As the agreement’s expiration date nears, an agreement that mainly benefits vessels from Andalusia, the Canary Islands and Galicia, the decision to renew or create a new agreement remains in the hands of the central Spanish Government and Morocco.