Aid amid strained relations

Morocco stalls on French earthquake aid amid strained relations

An official visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Morocco has been postponed several times.

BY CLEA CAULCUTT

Two days after a devastating earthquake killed roughly 2,500 people, Morocco is still considering France’s emergency aid offer, in a fresh sign of tense relations between the two countries.

Rabat has accepted aid from several countries, including the U.K and Spain, but has so far not responded to an offer from Paris. Relations between France and Morocco have been strained for several months over issues of visas for Moroccan nationals, the recognition of Western Sahara and relations with Algeria.

On Monday, French Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna said accepting aid was a sovereign decision and dismissed the questions over France’s offer as “an inappropriate controversy.”

“Morocco hasn’t refused any aid, or any proposal. That’s not the way things should be presented,” she said on French channel BFMTV. Paris will also pledge €5 million for NGOs working in Morocco.

Rescue workers are racing against the clock to find survivors still trapped under the rubble and get medical aid to survivors. Friday’s 6.8-magnitude earthquake was the deadliest in Morocco in 60 years, and hit its third-largest city Marrakech as well as villages in the Atlas Mountains where access for rescue operations has been difficult.

Frosty relations

Offers of help have been pouring in from countries across the world, including France, a former colonial power which is home to a large Moroccan diaspora.

On Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron wrote that he was “devastated by the terrible earthquake” on X (formerly Twitter) and sent Morocco’s King Mohammed VI a letter of support and offer of aid, according to AFP.

But relations between the two countries have been frosty for several years, and Macron’s offer has yet to be answered, even though Morocco’s King Mohammed VI was in France when the quake struck, according to Colonna. Morocco does not currently have an ambassador in France and a visit by Macron to the kingdom has been postponed several times.

Overall, France has enjoyed good relations with Morocco in recent decades, better than with other former colonies such as Algeria, but a major point of tensions emerged in 2021, when France slashed the number of visas available for Moroccan citizens.

At the time, the French government argued that Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia were failing to cooperate in efforts to tackle illegal immigration. In particular, French officials accused these countries of refusing to take back migrants whose visa applications in France had been rejected.

A visit to Rabat by Colonna last year was expected to improve relations and lead to an increase in visas for Moroccan citizens, but complaints about visa procedures have continued.

France’s efforts to restore relations with Algeria, Morocco’s archrival in the region, have also marred relations between Macron and King Mohammed VI. The French president made his second official visit to Algeria last year in a bid to reset relations, which have historically been very acrimonious.

Algeria backs the Polisario Front, a group which has been fighting for decades for the independence of Western Sahara. Morocco wants France to recognize Western Sahara as Moroccan, something Paris has so far declined to do.