Spain and Morocco they would have already completed the reopening of customs in Melillasomething that was agreed (along with the implementation of another in Ceuta) in April 2022 with the visit of Pedro Sánchez to Rabat after a historic international crisis due to the Brahim Ghali case. As stated this Thursday by the Government delegate in Melilla, Sabrina Moh, the reopening in the autonomous city will occur “as fast as possible”something that according to local media could be a fact in the coming days.
“I have always said and maintained since commercial customs was closed in 2018 that This Government was going to work to be able to reopen with all the guarantees”, Moh stressed to the journalists. The delegate regretted that during the day information, in her opinion, “unverified”, had been published, after several media outlets had published that Moh I would have been calling selectively and during the last few days to certain local businessmen to announce the reopening.
The highest representative of the central government in the autonomous city has emphasized the joint work to implement “a series of coordinated actions between both countries”, although she has warned that commercial customs will no longer be as before, but rather a adapted to the 21st century. “We have always been taking steps with the aim of achieving a job well done and optimal results and It will be done progressively until full normalization is achieved,” he added.
But the news has not been well received by all the actors involved. The president of Melilla, Juan José Imbrodahas charged against Sánchez’s Executive, whom he has accused of making the city autonomous “lose political sovereignty“with the measure and make Melilla be considered”one more moroccan city“and has even threatened to go to court. The popular has made it clear that they will oppose this decision with all their might.
For Imbroda, the city “will be the great loser” because according to the agreement with Rabat “the merchants of Melilla could not sell their imported products to Morocco, only the products that are manufactured in Melilla, that is, none, since there are no factories or anything like that.” Thus, the president of Melilla has put the focus on the Governmentwhom he has accused of want to sell your products to the detriment of local commerce. “While Melilla merchants could not sell their products to Morocco, this country could sell aggregates or food to Melilla, so local businesses will not benefit at all,” he insisted.
Parliamentary and judicial bodies
In the opinion of the president, what was agreed under the rules of Mohamed VI will cause that commercial customs with Europe “be completely annulled” because “they could sell to Morocco the products they wanted and they could buy the products they wanted.” Given this, the president has demanded that Moh and the national government dialogue with the legitimate representatives of the people of Melilla, while emphasizing that “the Constitution says so” and that the citizens have voted for the city government “to act in this kind of thing.”
Imbroda thus believes that the Sánchez Government has no interest in the opinion of the majority of Melillawhich represents the city’s Executive. “We are going to do everything we can to ensure that this does not happen,” he declared, announcing that they will go to parliamentary and judicial bodies to defend the city’s economy. “We will go to any instance, be it national parliamentary, be it judged, we will even see how the Melilla Prosecutor’s Office is doing so we can also work with it and defend the city’s economy,” said the popular one.
But it hasn’t stopped there. Imbroda has once again reiterated that the Government should “stay still and do nothing” because if this is authorized and allowed, economic and political sovereignty will be transferred to Morocco, something he considers “a colossal nonsense”. The president has warned that “a worse measure could never have occurred to the Spanish Government against Melilla.”
The agreement for the reopening of the Melilla commercial customs office and the implementation of a new one in Ceuta was reached after the Sánchez’s historic turn on the Spanish position on Western Saharain favor of the Moroccan theses about this former colony, since Spain abandoned this territory in 1975. Despite this, after two and a half years, the measure had not seen the light of day despite the fact that in recent months sources from the Executive indicated that It was partially working.
Last March, with respect to the border crossing of Ceutathe Ministry of Foreign Affairs assured 20 minutes that the “customs” – without the commercial surname – were open. “They are open and we continue to accommodate them to the different needs that we have detected during the tests,” they stated then. Although the truth is that, as Minister José Manuel Albares himself later argued, this step “does not work completely or definitively in the commercial field“.
In MelillaFor its part, commercial customs already existed, but it was closed by decision of the Alawite kingdom on August 1, 2018, something that represented a serious economic effect on the Melilla economy: According to data from the CEOE, in the year before its closure, up to 40 million euros had been invoiced. Last year, Imbroda himself asked for a “public” calendar regarding the reopening, although Albares assured that it would not be published so as not to receive “avalanches of people.”
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