“We have reached a definitive agreement for the reopening of land borders with Sebta and Melilla in the coming days”announced Wednesday the head of Spanish diplomacy José Manuel Albares, during a meeting in Marrakech of the coalition against the jihadist group Islamic State.
As a reminder, the border posts had been closed during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, and kept closed since, a diplomatic crisis between Madrid and Rabat and also extinguished, passing by.
In the next few days, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior has confirmed that the land borders of Sebbta and Melilla will be reopened on Tuesday May 17 at midnight, thus ending the two years and two months of closure of the border crossings. It was the Europa Press agency, which declared it repeating the announcement made by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, during the act of the 178th anniversary of the Civil Guard which he presided.
The date of the exact reopening was therefore ultimately communicated. “The decision is made, but there are still practical aspects” to be resolved, explained Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares yesterday to the audience of journalists present.
These practical, technical or operational aspects, it depends, have been entrusted to the good care of the Minister of the Interior. Albares affirmed in this regard that the “political decision” of the reopening had already been agreed with Morocco and specified that “ the agreement is now final “.
Albares did not give further details on entry and exit requirements, nor did he confirm whether the entry visa exemption to the presides for Moroccans residing in Nador and Tetouan will be maintained. He indicated that the question was listed among the “operational and practical aspects” that the Interior will have to finalize with the Moroccan authorities, stressing ” nor is it on the table to include Sebta and Melilla in the Schengen area for the time being”. It is a “reflection” which has different actors and aspects, we are in this reflection, he just limited himself to saying.
José Manuel Albares also specified that the high-level meeting between the two Kingdoms, which will be held in Morocco before the end of the year, will define a new treaty of friendship and cooperation between the two countries. He pointed out that a meeting of the working group to delimit maritime spaces, which has not met for fifteen years, will be held in Spain in June.
However, since their closure in March 2020, with the advent of the pandemic, the borders of Bab Sebta and Beni Nsar (Melilla) have only opened long enough to let out European motorhomes “stuck” in Morocco and , to allow the return of migrants from May 2021 (Sebta).
Also, if today we can rejoice on both sides of the reopening of the borders, it will not be much like before. Some, the followers of the half-empty glass, even predict the end of the daily passage of people between the two borders of Sebta (2,500) and Melilla (2,000). A population that was once characterized by cross-border workers employed in the two enclaves and carriers of goods, mainly mule women, now relieved of their burden and devoid of alternatives at the same time.
This contraband between Sebta and Fnideq alone represented between six and eight billion dirhams annually (between 570 and 750 million euros), according to estimates by a high-ranking customs officer. That is to say what the shortfall has been since the borders closed. But the delivery of the bales, and the related trading activity, had begun to slow down in 2018, when the Moroccan authorities, in their zeal to regulate the informal sector in this northern region, closed the commercial customs office in Melilla and a year later ended smuggling with Sebta.
Today on the other side of the river, the idea is to reopen this customs office in Melilla and to set up one in Sebta. The real question that really arises when we regulate, will the real border (Schengen) remain in the ports as at present or will it move to Tarajal or Bab Sebta and Beni Nsar?
If the closure had harmed the informal sector in all its components in the northern provinces, it had also caused a “serious trade crisis” in the presides, according to the Confederation of Entrepreneurs of Sebta (CECE).
On the south side, it is obvious that with the new definitions of a way out of the crisis, job opportunities will decrease or disappear for thousands of women and young people who lived from smuggling. And this, even if we consider the contribution of the Fnideq Economic Activities Zone (ZAEF), a new zone falling within the framework of the economic and social development program of the province of Tetouan and the prefecture of M’diq-Fnideq and in the continuity of the “Tangier Med” project.
It required the mobilization of a budget envelope of more than 200 million dirhams. According to Interior Ministry sources, the area will not receive goods from Sebta. Indeed, the ZAEF will legally import goods from different countries of the world.
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