Morocco receives substantial funding from the European Union, floods the European market with tomatoes and citrus fruit and squeezes producers in Spain and the rest of Europe. Much is said about Rabat’s agreements with the US, Israel or the UK. Far less is said about its real network of alliances, built on multi-alignment. Morocco holds 188 agreements with Russia, enjoys privileged fishing access with a quota of some 90,000 tonnes a year, and has tariff preferences within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). It exports to Moscow the same fruit and vegetables that European farmers struggle to place there because of the sanctions arising from the war in Ukraine.
With China the relationship is equally solid: Strategic partnership since 2016, active participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, zero tariffs applied by Beijing since 2026 and multi-million-dollar investment in the battery sector. The result is a perfect multi-alignment. Morocco collects from Brussels, competes inside Europe and opens doors in Moscow and Beijing.
Moroccan export agriculture is no spontaneous miracle. It has been built on greenhouses, cheap labour, intensive water use and privileged access to the European single market, together with EU funding itself. Souss-Massa and other producing areas have turned Morocco into a structural supplier of fruit and vegetables to the Union. Farmers in Almería, Murcia and Huelva in southern Spain, or in southeast France, know all about price erosion, the gap in labour costs and the repeated complaints over plant-health and environmental standards. Morocco has now overtaken Spain as the largest supplier of tomatoes to the EU market, with sales up 52 per cent since the agricultural protocol of the Association Agreement took effect in 2012, according to the Spanish fruit and vegetable exporters federation FEPEX. Meanwhile, the European Neighbourhood Policy continues to channel resources towards rural development, farm modernisation and climate adaptation programmes in Morocco. The EU bilateral allocation to the country came to about €1.15 billion between 2021 and 2025, including €115 million for the Terre Verte agriculture and forestry programme. Part of that funding reinforces, directly or indirectly, the export capacity that then competes inside the European market itself.
The Russian arm of the model is especially revealing and provides an extraordinary market for Moroccan agri-food exports. Morocco and Russia have one of the densest bilateral legal frameworks the Kingdom maintains with any State: 188 agreements. The Strategic Partnership of 2002 and the Deep Strategic Partnership of 2016, with 16 agreements signed during Mohammed VI’s visit to Moscow in March that year, form the political basis. On October 17, 2025 the maritime fisheries agreement was renewed for four years, with an estimated quota of around 90,000 tonnes a year for Russian vessels in Moroccan Atlantic waters. Protocols on customs cooperation and on information exchange within the Eurasian Economic Union tariff preference system were signed as well. Bilateral trade remains in the range of $1.5 billion to $2 billion (€1.3 billion to €1.7 billion). The decisive point is the contrast: While Western sanctions and difficulties with payments, insurance and logistics severely restrict the ability of European fruit and vegetable exporters to operate in the Russian market, Morocco can go on exploiting that flow. Moroccan mandarin sales to Russia rose 74 per cent in 2025, to 31,600 tonnes, according to the Russian veterinary and plant-health agency Rosselkhoznadzor. The European producer loses twice over.
With China the logic runs in parallel. The strategic partnership of 2016, the Belt and Road memorandum of 2017 and the joint implementation plan of 2022, which Morocco was the first north African country to sign, have opened the door to multi-million-dollar investment: The Mohammed VI Tangier Tech City, the Gotion High-Tech battery gigafactory in Kenitra and the BTR cathode and anode materials plants at Tanger Med. Bilateral trade passed $10.9 billion (€9.4 billion) in 2025. Since May 1, 2026, China has applied zero tariffs to products from Morocco and 52 other African countries. Rabat is studying a Chinese request for a full free trade agreement. Meanwhile, the customs agreements signed in 2026 make those trade flows easier still.
This multi-alignment does not operate in a vacuum. Moroccan farming and trade interests maintain an active lobbying presence in Brussels and in European capitals. Export associations, logistics operators and economic diplomacy work to preserve preferential access. Large hubs such as the port of Rotterdam serve as efficient entry and redistribution points for non-EU fruit and vegetables. European cold chains and logistics end up making Moroccan produce more competitive on the continent’s shelves.
Meanwhile, the Brussels bureaucracy applies the Green Deal and the 2030 Agenda to European farmers with a rigour that does not translate in the same way to imports. Cuts in plant-protection products, stricter environmental requirements and high energy costs make EU production an ever more expensive and complex activity. The Spanish or French producer has to meet rules that raise the cost of his harvest. The competitor from outside operates to different standards and still places its goods in the same market, thanks to trade agreements and the efficiency of European logistics. Regulatory asymmetry is not a technical detail: It is a structural competitive disadvantage.
Morocco takes advantage of Europe’s contradictions. It is a State that, over the past 70 years, has been used by various competitors of continental Europe to challenge Spain’s strategic position in the Strait of Gibraltar. That is a geographical and historical position whose roots lie in the shaping of Europe since Rome, when the diocese of Hispania also took in Mauretania Tingitana, the Roman province covering what is now northern Morocco. Any rational State would seek to diversify markets and maximise its room for manoeuvre. Responsibility therefore lies with Spain and with a European Union that confuses financial generosity with strategic influence, that puts the language of neighbourhood and ecological transition ahead of the defence of its own farming base and that keeps the door open to a partner playing simultaneously with the US, Russia, the UK, Israel or China, with whoever it needs to defend its interests.
There is no doubt at all that the European Union policy, driven in Spain by the best representative of Moroccan interests, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), and sustained in Brussels with the participation of the People’s Party (PP), is a suicidal policy. It is a policy that transfers productive capacity, market share and influence to a country that is at the same time tightening its links with Russia and China.
Europe goes on buying migration stability and cheap goods in the short term. European farmers pay the real price. And Morocco, meanwhile, goes on collecting, competing and opening doors in every direction.
Europe, after bleeding itself dry in two world wars, finds itself trapped once more on three fronts: To the south, Morocco and the challenge on the southern flank and the strait; to the east, the war in Ukraine and the conflict with Russia; and, in its own heart, a Brussels that houses a contemptible political class selling out the interests of the European nations through migration and eco-fanatical policies that weaken their sovereignty, their cohesion and their productive capacity.
Morocco plays all sides. Russia plays its cards. China plays its own. The question is far more disturbing: When will Spain and Europe play theirs again? Spain and the nations of Europe are left exposed.
