Unsurprisingly, the Polisario Front has openly welcomed the decision taken, Tuesday, by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) regarding the fisheries agreement concluded between Morocco and the European Union. The ruling delivered today comes as the separatist front is commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the «SADR»'s creation. M'Hamed Khadad, the Polisario coordinator with MINURSO, asked «all vessels fishing in the territorial waters of Western Sahara to withdraw immediately from their position», reports SPS news agency. He also urged the «EU to stop all funding in Western Sahara under its agreements with Morocco, calling on him to immediately start negotiations with the Polisario, the legitimate and sole representative of the Saharawi people to prepare legal fishing agreements». Khadad stressed that the movement «will undertake all legal procedures, including legal proceedings and appeals on the responsibilities of the European Union, to recover all the money it had paid to Morocco over the past decades under their bilateral agreements». At the end of January the Front's lawyer had estimated that Brussels owes its client EUR 240 million for failing to comply with the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union issued on February 2016. However, the CJEU's new decision suggests that the fisheries agreement concluded between the European Union and Morocco is valid since it does not include the adjacent waters of Western Sahara. This new judgment comes only four days after the Port Elizabeth court ruled in the absence of the Moroccan party involved, that the Moroccan phosphate cargo belongs to the Front. For the record, the court decided that the Polisario Front's Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) is the «owner of all the phosphate cargo currently loaded on the NM Cherry Blossom», noting that «phosphate ownership has never been legally held by the Office Cherifien des Phosphates (OCP) and/or Phosphates de Boucraa SA».
