Morocco is not bound by any new obligation stemming from the European Parliament’s resolution on the events that unfolded in Ceuta late last July, according to Ahmed Reda Chami, the Kingdom’s ambassador to the European Union and NATO.
Speaking on the sidelines of the resolution’s adoption, the diplomat moved to settle competing interpretations of the text that had circulated since the vote. The resolution, passed on Thursday, September 17, by 339 votes to 225 with 16 abstentions, contains no accusation and no directive aimed at the Kingdom, Chami said. He noted that the final version dropped a number of amendments he described as hostile toward Morocco, and that the text ultimately adopted reflected what he called a responsible, constructive and balanced approach taken by several members of the European Parliament.
The ambassador also criticized what he termed media and public-relations campaigns attempting to attribute positions to the resolution that it does not actually contain. A serious reading of the document, he stressed, must rest on its final wording rather than on the proposals and amendments debated before the vote.
The European text addresses the fallout from the wave of mass crossings recorded at Ceuta in late July and calls for stronger protection of the EU’s external borders, alongside deeper cooperation between Spain and Morocco on migration management and the readmission of people with no right to remain in the bloc.
On that front, Chami reiterated that handling migration flows requires daily, ongoing dialogue between Rabat and Brussels, which he described as the only path toward addressing shared challenges and finding sustainable solutions.
Morocco’s clarification comes as the vote has stirred political debate inside EU institutions, particularly given the resolution’s references to Ceuta and Melilla and to member states’ territorial integrity. By spelling out the resolution’s actual scope, Rabat aims to put an end to conflicting readings of the text while reaffirming its willingness to keep working with the EU on migration issues.
