Bilateral cooperation in migration related questions: case of the Morocco-EU partnership

Abstract

The partnership that ties the European Union and Morocco is amongst the most important ones within the context of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. While economic matters dominate the relations the two entities hold, security related matters occupy an almost equally important place. The geographic situation of Morocco, which places it at the advantage of being at a very important crossroad linking Africa to Europe, with an opening on the Atlantic and connections to the rest of the Mediterranean also comes with a non-negligible responsibility in terms of being the passage for “North to South” illegal migratory movements. The present paper will review Morocco’s past role as a “gendarme of Europe”, and will focus on the recent issues that have shaken the relations between the Kingdom and the EU to illustrate how they affected the cooperation between the two actors, mainly in the field of migration management.