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Paris crowds international law on foot.
In recent years, long before the official announcement of its support for the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, France intensifies its exploitation of natural wealth of the Sahrawi territory, occupied since 1975 by the Moroccan colonizer.
De facto encouraging colonial status quo, Paris crowds international law, allowing several of its companies to continue the systematic looting of resources and raw materials in this territory.
Economic lever of the Bayrou government, the French Development Agency has released more than 150 million euros in projects in occupied Western Sahara. These investments were engaged in flagrant violation of European law, exposing appeal to European and French justice. Because Paris knows, since October 2024, that the Court of Justice of the European Union has invalidated all the commercial agreements linking the EU in Morocco, occupying power. Legal judgments now serve as a reference and several countries, EU members, rigorously apply them and impose them on their companies.
In this regard, the Western Sahara Analysis Center (CASO) urged France on Tuesday to “scrupulously” respect international and European law, warning against any complicity in the looting of the natural resources of the Sahrawi people or violation of its right to self -determination.
The CASO called, in a press release, “France and all French public institutions to scrupulously respect international and European law, under penalty of seeing France directly called into question for complicity in the looting of Sahraoie resources and the violation of the right to self -determination”.
As such, this center has denounced “with force” the “biased and deceptive” treatment of a French public channel, which broadcast a television report praising an alleged “spectacular economic development” of Western Sahara thanks to Moroccan investments.
He recalled, in this context, that Western Sahara is a non -autonomous territory inscribed by the UN since 1963 on the list of territories to be decolonized.
Morocco, he continued, “does not exercise any recognized sovereignty and its occupation is illegal with regard to international law, as recalled by the International Court of Justice (advisory opinion, 1975) and multiple UN resolutions”.
He also highlighted the various decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), in particular the judgments of October 4, 2024 invalidating the UE-Morocco trade agreements because of the inclusion of Western Sahara without the consent of the Sahrawi people.
The AFD (French Development Agency), which has engaged with force in the looting of Sahrawi resources, acted in a blatant violation of European law. As a result, according to CASO’s warning, it is exposed to appeals to European and French justice.
The CASO stressed, in this regard, that “any financing of economic activities in this territory without agreement of the Polisario Front, the only recognized representative of the Sahrawi people by the UN, is likely to be deemed illegal and to give rise to sanctions”.