The European Union is often described as a normative political actor, meaning that it presents itself as a defender of international law, human rights, and democracy This description is not wrong, as the EU’s foreign policy is mostly based on trade, regulation, financial assistance, sanctions and diplomacy rather than direct military force. However, the case of Western Sahara shows that this normative identity is not applied consistently. While the EU strongly defends international law in cases such as Ukraine, Georgia or Cyprus, its approach becomes much more pragmatic when it involves an important economic and strategic partner such as Morocco.
Frozen conflicts are useful for studying this contradiction. The term usually refers to conflicts where large-scale fighting has stopped or decreased, but the core political dispute remains unresolved. However, the word “frozen” can be misleading, because such conflicts are rarely politically inactive. They continue to develop through negotiations, trade, border control, propaganda, legal disputes and involvement from external actors. This can also be explained through Ira William Zartman’s theory of ‘ripeness’. According to this theory, conflicts are most likely to be resolved when the parties reach a mutually hurting stalemate, meaning that continuing the conflict becomes more costly than negotiating a settlement, and when both sides believe that a negotiated solution is possible.
Western Sahara is a textbook example of a frozen conflict zone. The territory was formerly administered by Spain and has remained on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories since 1963. After Spain withdrew in the 1970s, Morocco claimed sovereignty over the territory, while the Polisario Front continued to demand independence for the Sahrawi people. The conflict led to years of war, followed by a ceasefire and the establishment of MINURSO in 1991, a UN mission originally intended to monitor the ceasefire and organise a referendum on self-determination. However, the referendum was never held, and the final status of Western Sahara remains unresolved. From the perspective of international law, the EU’s position should be relatively clear; Morocco is not recognised by the United Nations as the sovereign power over Western Sahara, and the Sahrawi people have a right to self-determination. Officially, the European Union supports a UN-led political process and does not formally recognise Moroccan sovereignty over the territory. In practice, however, the EU has repeatedly entered into economic arrangements with Morocco that include products or resources connected to Western Sahara. This creates a contradiction between the Union’s declared support for international law and its practical economic behaviour.
The most concrete examples are the EU-Morocco fisheries and agricultural trade arrangements. The fishing convention which encompassed Western Sahara’s territorial waters, thereby indirectly treating Morocco as the administrative authority over waters that legally belong to a separate and disputed territory. It also mentions similar problems with natural resources located on Sahrawi territory. This became legally significant in relation to the 2019 Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement between the EU and Morocco, which allowed EU vessels to operate in waters adjacent to Western Sahara through an agreement concluded with Morocco. The issue was not simply that the EU traded with Morocco, but that the agreement affected a territory over which Morocco is not the recognised sovereign.
A second example is the 2019 amendment to the EU-Morocco Association Agreement, which extended tariff preferences to products originating in Western Sahara. This meant that agricultural products from the territory could enter the EU under preferences negotiated with Morocco. In practical terms, the EU benefited from trade with Western Sahara while still avoiding formal recognition of Moroccan sovereignty. This is what makes the policy contradictory: the EU does not openly say that Western Sahara is Moroccan, but it creates trade procedures in which Morocco functions as the main administrative channel.
This contradiction became especially visible in October 2024, when the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the EU-Morocco agreements concerning agricultural products and fisheries had been concluded in breach of the principles of self-determination and the relative effect of treaties, because the people of Western Sahara had not consented to them. The Court also clarified that consulting only the current inhabitants of the territory was not sufficient, since a large part of the Sahrawi people lives outside Western Sahara. It also ruled that products such as melons and tomatoes from Western Sahara must be labelled as originating from Western Sahara, without reference to Morocco.
However, the EU did not fully abandon this pattern. In 2025, Morocco and the EU reached a new trade arrangement allowing agricultural products from Western Sahara to receive the same preferential tariffs as Moroccan products, while introducing origin labels using the regional names “Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra” and “Dakhla-Oued Eddahab”. This attempted to respond to the Court’s concerns, but it still kept Western Sahara inside the EU-Morocco trade agreements. The economic explanation for this behaviour is obvious: Morocco is one of the European Union’s most important partners in North Africa. It plays a major role in trade, migration management and regional stability. For the EU, maintaining stable relations with Morocco is strategically valuable.
This is where the hypocrisy of EU foreign policy becomes clear. The EU strongly emphasises sovereignty, territorial integrity and international law. In Georgia, the Union refuses to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In Cyprus, it does not recognise Northern Cyprus and continues to view the division of the island as legally abnormal. In Ukraine, the EU presents the defence of territorial integrity as one of the central principles of European security. All of this makes the European Union a beacon of normative values on the international stage. Yet in Western Sahara, where the stronger party is not an enemy but a partner, the EU becomes much more flexible.
The case of Western Sahara shows that the European Union’s foreign policy towards frozen conflicts is selective. The EU can defend international law strongly when doing so aligns with its geopolitical goals, especially in cases involving Russia or direct threats to European security. However, when the issue concerns a valuable partner such as Morocco, the Union becomes more pragmatic and less willing to apply its principles consistently. This is why Western Sahara is not just an irrelevant frozen conflict far from home, but also a showcase that the EU’s values have a weakness when it clashes against economic interests.