The Committee on International Trade adopted the report by José BOVÉ (Greens/EFA, FR) in which it recommends the European Parliament to give its consent to the draft Council decision on the conclusion of an Agreement in the form of an Exchange of Letters between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco concerning reciprocal liberalisation measures on agricultural products, processed agricultural products, fish and fishery products, the replacement of Protocols 1, 2 and 3 and their Annexes and amendments to the Euro-Mediterranean Agreement establishing an association between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the Kingdom of Morocco, of the other part.
It should be noted that the recommendation of the Committee on International Trade to approve the agreement was made contrary to the opinion adopted by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, which considers that this agreement is unbalanced with regard to tariffs (with potentially negative implications on regions which specialise in vegetable cultivation) and raises doubts about the ability of the Community system’s ability to monitor and enforce time frames and tariff quotas, which are often ignored by Moroccan operators.