Europe recognises Morocco’s Western Sahara unity for first time

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has, for the first time, printed Morocco’s map as a single, complete territory including the disputed Western Sahara territory in an official EU publication dated March 3, as reported by Moroccan government-friendly Yabiladi and agencies. 

The graphic appears on the “EU Strategic Engagement Index”, where a world map highlights the Western Sahara integrated into Moroccan territory as part of a report outlining Europe’s commercial strategy in African markets. The accompanying text notes that EU firms are “losing trade share in Morocco, Lebanon and Algeria”, placing Morocco in the same competitive frame as other politically and commercially sensitive partners. 

In Rabat, such cartographic choices are rarely treated as technical. They intersect with a crucial legal issue, the status of the Western Sahara in international law, the UN-led process, and how EU institutions draft documents that later determine financing, procurement, and investment risk assessments. Even when a map has no standalone legal effect, it circulates through the same Brussels system that defines regulatory language, partnership instruments and, most importantly, binding contracts followed by public banks and private investors.

This development follows the position taken by Morocco on January 29 as the EU–Morocco Association Council, and the Council of the EU restated its support for the UN framework and explicitly referenced negotiations “taking as a basis Morocco’s Autonomy Proposal,” while also reinforcing the principle of self-determination in line with the Security Council’s approach. 

For Morocco, the matter is formally and substantially critical. The EU–Morocco trade and international arrangements have repeatedly been litigated, with EU courts scrutinising whether agreements can apply to the territory without proper consent mechanisms, jurisprudence and laws that continues to influence how Brussels drafts texts relating to the Western Sahara. 

Against those procedural problems, the decision taken by EIB in the last report depicting Morocco’s territorial continuity is more than a mere design decision. EIB took a formal position in defending Morocco rights of independence and self recognition, laying the basis for a stronger and unified nation in the foreseeable future.

Yabiladi plus agencies, Maghreb.org