In the course of two weeks, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) rejected two Pro-Polisario amendments, the most recent of which was introduced on Thursday November 24, by Hungarian MEP, Tamás Meszerics, on behalf of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance.
During the extraordinary meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee, held at the EP’s headquarters in Strasbourg, MEPs were expected to submit proposals on the European Union’s foreign policy. The proposals were to be adopted later on at a plenary session.
On Thursday, Hungarian MEP Tamás Meszerics tried, on behalf of his group’s 50 MEPs from 17 countries and 5 regions, to introduce amendments to the text on the EU foreign and security policy. His amendments were ultimately rejected by the Committee.
The text of Amendment No. 444, as presented by the Hungarian politician, underlines the importance of ensuring the coherence of the Union’s action regarding situations of occupation or annexation of territories, and insists that international humanitarian law should guide EU policy in all these situations, “including cases of prolonged occupation, such as in Palestine, Western Sahara and northern Cyprus, and the multiple frozen conflicts in the Eastern Partnership countries.”
The text of the proposed amendments, which were rejected, is exactly the same as an amendment proposed previously by German MEP, Barbara Lochbihler, on behalf of the same European parliamentary group.
Tamás Meszerics’s amendmenrs are just a “new maneuver” (…) meant to harm Morocco’s rights on its Sahara, the Moroccan news agency MAP commented.
But the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee realized the manoeuver and quickly set the record straight, simply by rejecting the new text as they had done for the previous amendment proposal.
In Fine, it is a new setback for European lobbyists who strive to defend by all means the Polisario’s separatist theses to the detriment of the supreme interests of the Moroccan Nation and the privileged relations binding the European Union and Morocco.