Morocco has stepped up efforts to shield the money its diaspora sends home, after new European Union banking rules threatened the intermediary role Moroccan lenders play across the bloc.
Transfers from Moroccans living abroad reached 122 billion dirhams (€11.4 billion) in 2025, according to Morocco’s Office des Changes. That is worth roughly 7.5 per cent of gross domestic product on World Bank figures and almost as much as the country earns from tourism.
The flows are still rising. They hit 61.48 billion dirhams (€5.7 billion) in the first six months of 2026, up 9.9 per cent on the same period a year earlier.
At issue is Article 21c of the sixth Capital Requirements Directive, known as CRD VI. It bars banks from outside the EU from supplying core services such as deposit-taking and lending to clients in a member state unless they open an authorised branch there.
Member states were required to write the provision into national law by January 10, 2026. It applies from January 11, 2027, with contracts signed before July 11, 2026 shielded under grandfathering arrangements.
Moroccan banks currently use branches and representative offices in Europe to let emigrants open and run accounts at home and move money back. Bank Al-Maghrib, the central bank, describes this as their relay activity.
Rabat assembled a task force drawing in the central bank, the finance and foreign ministries and the main Moroccan lenders. It approached the European Commission first, then switched to bilateral bargaining because member states are free to transpose the directive as they see fit.
France was handled first, being the biggest market for the diaspora business. Bank Al-Maghrib governor Abdellatif Jouahri said in June that an understanding had been reached that left the relay activity untouched, and that Brussels had raised no objection.
Jouahri told reporters on June 23 that contacts were under way with the Netherlands and Belgium, with meetings pencilled in for Spain and Italy. Germany is expected to follow.
Spain is the second largest source of the transfers, sending €1.589 billion in 2025 on Bank of Spain figures, or more than 1 per cent of Moroccan GDP.
Those talks now open with relations between Madrid and Rabat under strain, after tens of thousands of people crossed illegally into Ceuta from Moroccan territory on July 30. Spain deployed the army to the enclave and Italy threatened to suspend Schengen arrangements with Madrid.
The stakes for Morocco run well beyond diplomacy. Some 87 per cent of remittances goes on everyday household spending, according to the Haut-Commissariat au Plan, and the inflows underpin foreign currency reserves that pay for fuel and wheat imports.
