HM King Mohammed VI (right) and French president François Hollande meet today in Casablanca as French delegation begins official two-day state visit to Morocco.
Bernama/MAP, KUNA (PARIS, France, April 3, 2013) — French President Francois Hollande arrives in Morocco today for a two-day visit that will include talks with King Mohammed VI and senior government officials, the Elysee Palace indicated. France has the closest ties with Morocco of any of the North African former colonies in the Maghreb and it is the largest foreign investor in Morocco and a strong advocate of better European Union ties between the 27-nation group and Rabat.
France garnered support for Morocco in the UN Security Council and has been a staunch supporter of Rabat’s position relative to Algerian-backed Polisario militants who have waged a war against the Moroccan army in the Western Sahara for decades.
Hollande will kick of his visit with a meeting Wednesday evening in Casablanca with the Moroccan King before the French and Moroccan delegations get to work on consolidating the already “high-grade” relations between the two countries.
King Mohammed VI was the first foreign leader to visit Paris after Hollande took office last June, a demonstration of the close ties between the two men.
On the international scene, Paris has constantly backed Moroccan demands for better status with the EU and the French government has also backed Morocco’s proposals for wide-reaching autonomy but not for independence for the Western Sahara zone which has been resisting Moroccan annexation for four decades.
The French president’s delegation includes nine ministers who will sign agreements and contracts dealing with the food industry, higher education, urban development, the Casablanca metro, and vocational training. President Hollande is also accompanied by some 60 captains of industry who will attend the Morocco-France Economic Forum to be held this week.
According to Elysee palace sources, the two-day state visit will seek to re-invent the bilateral partnership and new ways to maintain Morocco’s status as a “close and necessary partner” of France.
“French-Moroccan relations are fluid, excellent and intense, both at the political level and as far as bilateral co-operation is concerned,” the sources said, adding that the visit was very important as it would enable the maintaining of high-level relations and developing it in the years and decades to come.
“The message is clear: We are Morocco’s first partner and we have to stay Morocco’s first partner,” said the source, who played down the sigificance of the rise of Spain’s trade with Morocco in 2012 at the expense of France, describing it as “a temporary situation.”
“We have to define future co-operation actions with Morocco as an economic partner of the future,” commented the source.
In addition to supporting the ongoing political and economic reforms in the North African kingdom, President Hollande’s visit aims to intensify the trend set three months ago in Rabat by the two countries’ high-level meeting of the Moroccan and French heads of government.
This meeting resulted in more than 10 agreements, including four loan agreements worth 280 million euros, extended by the French development agency to finance development projects in Morocco — the Casablanca tramway, regional port, technopolis competitiveness and vocational training.
The French president will encourage French businesses operating in Morocco to continue to invest in Morocco in renewable energies, transport, urban services, youth and education, the source said.
There are more than 750 affiliates of French enterprises in Morocco, including 38 that are listed on the French stock market. They employ around 120,000 persons. Morocco is also the first destination of France’s private investments in Africa, with an amount of 5.6 billion euros in the 2000-2011 period. Morocco is a regional hub for French enterprises wishing to develop projects in West Africa, the Mediterranean or the Maghreb.
In this context and given Morocco’s central role within its region, France grants a large importance to re-launching the Maghreb construction and Euro-Mediterranean arena, focusing on projects such as the trans-Maghreb highway and the re-opening of land borders between Morocco and Algeria.
