Photo by Michele Benericetti (CC BY-ND 2.0)

On October 6, 2025, the European Commission released a revised amendment to the EU-Morocco trade agreement concerning Western Sahara, a territory disputed between Morocco and the Algeria-backed Polisario Front. Listed by the UN as a “non-self-governing territory,” Western Sahara has been under Moroccan occupation since 1975. Its people, the Sahrawi, continue to seek independence, while the region remains contested.

The amendment responds to rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which emphasized that EU agreements with Morocco cannot automatically apply to Western Sahara, as the Sahrawi people must be treated as a “third party.” According to the Court, any agreement must meet two conditions: it “must not give rise to an obligation for that people,” and it must confer “a specific, tangible, substantial, and verifiable benefit from the exploitation of the territory’s natural resources, proportional to the degree of that exploitation.” These benefits should reach the local population, follow sustainable development principles, and include mechanisms for monitoring and verification.

The amendment’s main revisions include a requirement that products from Western Sahara carry origin labels, along with the establishment of a joint EU-Morocco assessment to review sustainable development and the use of benefits. However, implementation has fallen short because the labels follow a Moroccan administrative designation that does not clarify that products originate from occupied settlements, which can mislead consumers. The amendment also lacks concrete mechanisms to verify whether benefits reach the Sahrawi population. Most of the economic advantages continue to flow to Moroccan settlers in the territory, while the Sahrawi people remain largely excluded.

In practice, while the amendments introduce procedural safeguards, they fail to meet the CJEU’s substantive requirements and leave the core issues of resource control and local benefits unresolved.