Morocco: The Threat that Europe Refuses to Acknowledge

Few threats to Europe are as underestimated and strategically corrosive as the emergence of a new hostile power at the other end of the Mediterranean.

While Brussels focuses its attention on curbing the Russian threat alongside its strenuous relationship with China, Europe’s southern flank is quietly intimidated by Morocco: a hostile state whose foreign policy increasingly rests in territorial expansionism, coercive weaponization of migration and the neo-colonial domination of the Western Sahara.

It is difficult to determine what aspect of the Moroccan question is more puzzling, whether the state’s consistent and deliberately hostile behaviour, or Europe’s refusal to call Morocco’s conduct what it is: hostile statecraft.

According to communications by Spain’s intelligence services, Moroccan agents have targeted Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s private mobile communications, as well as mobile devices of other ministers and members of the Spanish government through sophisticated espionage software. Paired with veiled threats in Rabat’s rhetoric and the reiterative use of migrants as a form of geopolitical pressure, one would hope that both Spain and Europe would declare the need to revise its North African policy.

This change, however, has not come. Rather, we have witnessed quite the opposite. Morocco continues to enjoy the status as an indispensable partner of the European Union, simultaneously acting as a chronic destabiliser. The reality is that Morocco today follows a similar strategy as Russia, only with different instruments and on a different scale.

Origins of the conflict

The Kingdom of Morocco, as a sovereign state in its current form, achieved independence in 1956; however Moroccan political authority and monarchy predate this period by several centuries. Despite the current political configuration of the Moroccan state, tensions between Spain and Morocco date back to the Early Middle Ages.

The territory of modern Spain was partially conquered in 711 by Muslim forces from North Africa, with their rule expanding across most of the Iberian Peninsula until Christian kingdoms gradually reconquered it, culminating in 1492 with the fall of Granada to Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon.

Spain then extended its presence into North Africa, incorporating Melilla in 1497 and acquiring Ceuta, originally taken by Portugal in 1415, later recognised as Spanish territory in the Treaty of Lisbon of 1668. Despite this, Al-Andalus remains a constitutive element of Moroccan identity as reflected in the 2011 Constitution.

In the 19th century, tensions around Ceuta led to the Hispano-Moroccan War and the Treaty of Wad Ras, under which Morocco paid reparations and ceded territory, weakening the Sultanate and enabling European expansion. This culminated in the Treaty of Fez, establishing Spanish control over northern Morocco until independence, despite resistance like the Rif War.

Morocco was granted independence from France and Spain in 1956, within the broader context of 20th-century decolonisation in Africa. Despite the end of colonial rule, lingering historical memory remains a source of political tensions between both countries.

Morocco as an expansionist power

Nowadays, Morocco’s foreign policy is anchored in irredentist ambition, or what some scholars have euphemistically described as ‘territorial recovery’. Through this doctrine, Rabat ultimately aims to extend its territory to the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, as well as the Perejil Island – areas which already suffered a Moroccan invasion attempt in 2002.

Morocco regards the Spanish exclaves as a lingering symbol of Muslim defeat following the Reconquista and as vestiges of European colonialism in Africa, given that these cities are geographically situated in North Africa despite remaining under Spanish sovereignty. This claim however, ignores the fact that Ceuta and Melilla were Spanish territories long before the state of Morocco was constituted as such.

A consequence of this long-standing, continuous rule is that the local population is Spanish. According to recent polling carried out by the Spanish public statistical research institute CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas), an overwhelming majority of over 75% of the local population of Ceuta and Melilla consider the exclaves rightfully Spanish, as opposed to a mere 15% who supported the premise that Ceuta and Melilla should be Moroccan territory.

Ceuta and Melilla are not, as Morocco claims, colonies of Spain. This is backed by the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, which does not recognise the exclaves as non-self-determining territories. Due to centuries of continuous Spanish administration, the inhabitants of Ceuta and Melilla are and identify as Spanish. Thus, the characterisation of these territories as colonial remnants is entirely without foundation.

Morocco similarly poses a grave threat to Spanish sovereignty over the Canary Islands, which the Royal Moroccan Navy has already put under alarm in past occasions due to military exercises conducted near Spanish territorial waters. Politically, strategically and symbolically, Morocco disputes every square centimetre of Spanish territory on the African coast.

The failed invasion attempt of the 2002 Perejil Island, during which Moroccan troops occupied the Spanish islet, was not an accident, nor was it an isolated incident: Perejil was a test of European resolve. In 2002, Morocco attempted to undermine Spanish and European sovereignty over widely accepted Spanish territory through military means. Since then, the state has tried to do so through political and diplomatic means: in 2022 the Moroccan delegation to the United Nations addressed a letter to the High Commissioner for Human Rights claiming that Melilla is occupied territory.

The Spanish military response to the invasion of Perejil was successful, but it seems as though Europe did not learn its lesson. Two decades later, we stand before an increasingly hostile, rearmed and diplomatically confident Morocco.

The logic of Moroccan action is unequivocal. Despite internationally recognised borders, dialogue mechanisms and historical evidence against Rabat’s claims, Morocco still considers Spanish territories in Africa ‘colonial leftovers’ to be recovered.

A colonial power in the Western Sahara

In spite of the complicity of key players in the international community–including that of the United States and Israel, both countries which have recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara–the role of Morocco in the region is none other than that of a colonial occupier.

One can refer to Professor Dr. Macharia Munene’s ‘Multiple Colonialism in Africa’, an extensive historical analysis in which he concludes Morocco became a ‘new colonial power’ that imposed itself on the Sahrawi people after Spanish withdrawal from the region. While the Sahrawi people are occupied and denied their rights to self-determination, the world remains silent.

This situation begs the question, where is the EU? Where are the normative values that allegedly shape the foreign policy agenda of this organisation?

As of late January 2026, the EU has decided to officially recognise the Western Sahara as Moroccan territory. While the EU has historically stood up to hostile states (most recently to Russian aggression in the east), the Union has inaugurated its 2026 policy agenda by rewarding the regional power in Northern Africa that has subjugated the Sahrawi people for over 50 years.

If the recent change of heart in Brussels on this matter may seem inexplicable, one must look closer at the details behind the development of EU-Morocco relations. During the same EU-Morocco Association Council meeting, the strength of bilateral relations were reaffirmed. This becomes particularly relevant in light of the implementation of the EU’s New Migration and Asylum Pact, where Morocco plays an important role in controlling migrant waves by land and sea.

From a trade and commercial perspective, Morocco and the EU have reaffirmed and signalled a willingness to deepen economic and trade cooperation within the existing framework. Trade between the two now amounts to around €60 billion annually, with the European Union maintaining a surplus of roughly €10 billion.

Additionally, Morocco has control over a critical chokepoint in food security by holding 70% of the world’s phosphate reserves, an important ingredient in fertilisers and a critical raw material for the European Union, which Morocco uses as a bargaining chip. Up until recently, the European Union was highly dependent on Russian phosphate – but as a consequence of the war in Ukraine, Morocco has drawn substantial profits, becoming the largest supplier of phosphate to the EU, accounting for close to 20% of its total supply in 2025.

Despite the urgent push to decouple from Russia, EU–Morocco trade relations suggest the EU has, in effect, compromised elements of its core values to preserve ties with an increasingly assertive and strategically ambitious partner in North Africa.

Weaponized migration: Rabat’s predilect tool

It is not sufficiently discussed in Europe the extent to which Morocco has transformed migration into statecraft. Academic literature has uncovered this on many occasions: Morocco uses migrants as political leverage, with the purpose of pressuring Spain–and the EU by extension–into acquiring investment, aid and political concessions concerning, among others, the issue of the Western Sahara.

Nina Mihlojcic’s study ‘Migration as an Instrument of Modern Political Warfare’ identifies Morocco as one of the clearest contemporary examples of coercive engineered migration, using ‘opportunistic and manipulative migration policies’ to obtain financial and political concessions from Europe. The procedure consists of the loosening of controls around the borders in Ceuta and Melilla, prompting thousands of individuals to cross the border within hours.

This specific pressure tactic can be pinned down to concrete events: In 2021, a diplomatic crisis between Morocco and Spain erupted after Spain allowed Sahrawi Polisario leader Brahim Ghali to be treated in a Spanish hospital. Morocco retaliated by ‘opening the gates’ in Ceuta, where over 8,000 migrants crossed the border within a few hours. The incident serves as one of Rabat’s most evident forms of political coercion.

Migration towards Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands has been reiteratively used by Morocco as a coercion tactic because it knows that Europe is vulnerable: morally, legally and politically. Rabat is aware of these realities and has no issue in exploiting them for their geopolitical and economic advantage.

Europe’s southern flank, a blind spot

Perhaps most worrying is not necessarily the fact that Morocco is silently shaping its foreign policy course like that of an expansionist neo-imperialist power, but rather that Europe pretends that this is not the case.

Despite the EU publicly condemning certain pressure tactics used by Morocco, such as the weaponisation of migrant children at the Spanish border for political concessions in 2021, what we see is deepened cooperation with Rabat reflected in billions of euros in aid over the last decade, cooperation in migration and tight trade relations.

Spain is Europe’s southern shield, and it faces a neighbour that has reiteratively disputed its territory, destabilised its borders and conducted intelligence operations on its officials. Yet the EU’s security discussions overwhelmingly look east rather than south. Soon, Brussels will have to come to the realisation that the Mediterranean is closer to being a frontline than it is to being a buffer.

Moroccan strategy mirrors Russia’s in that territorial revisionism, hybrid pressure and test probes of European cohesion are fundamental practices of their foreign policy agenda. Rabat, much like Moscow, takes advantage of EU ambiguity and responds with greater assertiveness.

It might be convenient to remember that the security threat in Eastern Europe was not born with the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, nor did it originate with the annexation of Crimea – rather, it was a historical process that simmered for years. A hostile actor does not need tanks to undermine its neighbour: it identifies weaknesses and exploits them repeatedly, until it is the right time to strike.

It is time for Europe to wake up

Europe must stop treating Morocco as a harmless partner and must instead view it as what it is: an increasingly aggressive state pursuing expansionist objectives. Spain is its immediate target, but Europe is its ultimate one. Through threats, weaponised migration and hostile military advances, Morocco seeks economic, political and territorial concessions from the European Union and Spain.

Spanish territory–and therefore European territory–is at stake. The case of Morocco is a test to European cohesion that has flown under the radar for far too long. European unity must be conceived as a chain which is as strong as its weakest link. While Spanish sovereignty has been transgressed and basic principles of international law consistently violated, Brussels has granted hundreds of millions yearly in aid, diplomatic support and political backing.

The idea that we shall not concede to hostile foreign powers must apply to the south just as much as it applies to the east. While the EU continues to be complicit in Moroccan hostility, we should remember: If Spain bends, Europe breaks.

Sebastián Sinisterra is a European Law graduate from Maastricht University and a member of the Hertie School’s Master of International Affairs cohort. He is particularly interested in European Union policymaking and integration, with a focus on how foreign policy and defence shape Europe’s strategic direction.