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The relationship between the European Union and the Polisario Front is once again raising suspicions in the European Parliament. French MEP Nicola Bay, the right-hand man in Brussels of controversial far-right MEP Eric Zemmour and a former senior member of Le Pen's party, once again questioned the presence of Polisario representatives at the African Union-EU summit in Brussels in February 2022.

Bay presented on 25 August three questions addressed to the Vice-President of the European Commission and responsible for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, about a possible reconfiguration of the treatment of the Polisario by the European executive. Bay's questions coincide with the slip of the head of European diplomacy, who last week claimed that the European Union and Spain would support a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara. A slip-up that earned him complaints from Rabat and even the cancellation of a meeting with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita.

The question arises as to whether the questions registered by the French right-winger in the European Parliament are an attempt to pull the strings in Europe to get the Polisario Front to be considered a terrorist organisation. The first question registered by Bay, "Why did the VP/HR and EEAS agree to the Polisario Front attending the next AU-EU summit?", was already answered by Borrell when Tom Zdechovsk of the European People's Party raised the same question on 7 February 2022, a few days before the AU-EU summit was due to take place. "According to the agreed practice, the Summit was co-organised by the European Union and the African Union, with each organisation responsible for inviting its own members," Borrell replied in writing at the time. The self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has had a seat in the AU since 1982.

Nicolas Bay adds two more questions, which raise the question of the look and tone with which the EU should treat Algeria's proxy group. "Will they hold the Polisario officials in question to account for the criminal acts of which they are accused?" and "Will they seriously examine the activities of the Polisario Front and adopt a firm diplomatic stance towards the group?", Bay wrote in writing on Thursday. Bay cites several reports accusing the separatist organisation of embezzling and diverting EU funding to the Tindouf camps, as well as re-emphasising the incentive for armed Islamist groups in the Sahel that Tindouf provides. The dangerous relationship between Sahel terrorists and the Polisario Front has already been accused by a report by the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, a Brussels-based think tank headed by Claudo Moniquet (formerly of the French DGSE) in 2010. This is not the first time such doubts have arisen in the European Parliament, and for some voices among the Moroccan Hashemite people they could be a game changer for European dynamics.

"European elites, including the French parliamentarian Nicolas Bay, take a position on the reality of the separatist front as a terrorist organisation practising oppression against the inhabitants of the Moroccan Sahara. The Polisario leadership has been implicated in serious crimes. Rapes, torture, kidnappings and extrajudicial executions", Mohamed Salem Abdelfatah, president of the Saharawi Observatory for Media and Human Rights, told the Arabic daily Al-arab.

According to Abdelfatah, there is a growing trend in Brussels to support the strategic partnership with Morocco and condemn the Polisario Front. This trend is a perceptible reality through the European Commission's attempts to establish more and more strategic pacts and partnerships with Morocco in economic, security and illegal immigration regulation matters.

The signature condemnation of the Polisario Front, although part of the agenda of the largest parliamentary groups of the European right, has not yet caught on with the executive and its external action, which, as it responded to Joo Ferreira MEP (GUE/NGL) in 2019, considers that 'the Polisario Front, as well as other Saharawi civil society organisations, are some of the interlocutors that the EU turns to when it comes to discussing issues related to Western Sahara'.

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European right renews its assault on the Polisario Front - Atalayar