The mission report of Patricia Lalonde, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the proposed EU-Morocco trade deal for Western Sahara, is remarkably void of facts and figures. WSRW retorts.
 |
Origen: EP mission report on Western Sahara: all politics, no trade – wsrw.org
All Saharawi groups have protested the EU plans for a trade deal for Western Sahara. All are falsely claimed to have been consulted in the EU’s consultation process. Nearly none of them met with the European Parliament’s mission to Western Sahara in September 2018. As part of the European Parliament’s assessment of the Commission’s proposal to extend the EU’s trade deal with Morocco to Western Sahara, a two-day fact finding mission to the territory was undertaken on 3-4 September 2018. Leading the mission was French liberal MEP Patricia Lalonde, who is the Parliament’s rapporteur on the proposed trade arrangement for Western Sahara.
Ms Lalonde will formally present her mission report to the EP Committee for International Trade on 5 November, but the report is already publicly available. Find Ms Lalonde’s mission report on Western Sahara here.
The mission report presents no information on technical aspects relating to the envisioned future EU-Western Sahara trade. In addition, it hardly addresses the opinion of the people of Western Sahara.
To summarize:
– 80% of the mission’s time was spent on meeting with (pro-) Moroccan interlocutors;
– 90% of the mission report is dedicated to (pro-) Moroccan voices;
– 1/3 of the territory and around 175,000 Western Sahara refugees have been ignored;
– 80% of the European Parliament was not reflected in the composition of the mission;Western Sahara Resource Watch encourages all Members of the European Parliament to rigorously scrutinize Ms Lalonde’s report. Find our own facts and figures below or through this link.
(…)
EP mission report on Western Sahara: all politics, no trade – wsrw.org