Morocco as a Migration Partner

This English text is a summary of a DGAP Report that was originally published in German. Please refer to ­“Marokko als Migrations­partner” for the complete version.

Summary

This report compares Morocco’s migration cooperation with Germany, France, and Spain and analyzes three dimensions:

1. Goals and priorities of the reviewed countries: Morocco’s migration cooperation follows clear overarching political interests. Concretely, the kingdom seeks to gain international support for its plan to establish Western Sahara as an autonomous region under Moroccan sovereignty. It also aims to strengthen its image as a reliable international partner for both European and African countries. In terms of migration policy, Morocco aims to promote legal migration in certain sectors, control its borders, and engage with its diaspora economically and culturally. Meanwhile, the European countries’ interests are primarily focused on return and readmission, legal labor and educational migration, and the containment of irregular migration. In the case of Spain, this primarily means border cooperation.

2. Types and formats of cooperation: The main format for bilateral cooperation on migration with Morocco is the so-called Permanent Joint Migration Group (GMMP), an instrument initiated by Morocco that facilitates regular meetings between Moroccan representatives and their counterparts from the respective European countries. Traditional forms of ­cooperation, in particular high-level political visits, also play an important role. Compared with ­Germany, Spain and France organize a greater number of high-level visits with Morocco. Spain is especially reliant on using formal migration agreements as another traditional instrument. These agreements provide the legal framework for the cooperation ­between Spain and Morocco, including large-scale circular migration schemes.

3. Effects of migration cooperation: The effects of migration cooperation with Morocco vary across Germany, France, and Spain, depending on the area of action:

• Work processes: The GMMP strengthens personal contacts and trust between officials, thus generating clear qualitative benefits. However, quantitative trends, such as the number of Moroccans returning from Europe or entering Europe through regular channels, depend on additional factors, particularly the state of diplomatic relations and domestic policy measures.

• Return: Cooperation within the GMMP framework and improved diplomatic relations appear to have contributed to increased returns from Germany and France – though notably not from Spain. In Spain, the number of returns is currently six times lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic despite improved cooperation with Morocco. This is likely due, in part, to domestic policies to regularize the status of undocumented migrants (see Figure 1 on page 2).

• Legal migration: The increase in labor migration from Morocco to Germany can partly be attributed to bilateral cooperation; more so, it is due to unilateral policy measures such as Germany’s Skilled Immigration Act, which was introduced in 2020 and expanded in 2023. Since then, the number of work visas issued has increased more than tenfold (see Figure 3 on page 4). Yet visa issuance processes continue to lag despite increased staff. In contrast, Spain and France have long been processing high volumes of visa applications from Morocco and have made administrative adjustments. For instance, Spanish and Moroccan authorities have developed a coordinated and priority-based visa procedure to manage tens of thousands of applications each year for a circular migration program called GECCO. Similarly, France has streamlined and simplified its visa issuance procedures (see Figure 2 below).

• Irregular migration: In recent years, Morocco’s control and security measures (partly financed by European funds) have shifted the points of departure along the two main migration routes through Morocco, the Western Mediterranean route and the West African route. A side-effect is that cooperation with additional countries along these new routes, such as Senegal and Mauritania, has become necessary, giving those countries increased political bargaining power.

Recommendations

The German government should consider the following five recommendations for future cooperation on migration with Morocco and other third countries:

1. Germany should continue the GMMP under the leadership of a high-ranking official if the German government intends to prioritize Morocco as a partner country. Personnel transitions should be managed to preserve the strong personal relationships and contacts that have proven crucial, especially with key actors in Morocco’s Ministry of ­Interior and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Furthermore, the new German leadership of the GMMP should ­engage in more dialogue with other European counterparts who lead the GMMP with Morocco to inform future negotiations.

2. Germany should expand visa processing capacities in Morocco and adapt them more ­strategically during peak periods. Long waiting times for appointments and administrative hurdles remain persistent obstacles. Germany should follow the examples of France and Spain, which have adapted their visa procedures to handle higher volumes of applications. Given the tenfold rise of German work visas issued to Moroccan nationals since 2020, this issue is increasingly urgent. The German Federal Foreign ­Office should instruct its consulate in Morocco to bundle visa applications more systematically by category and provide temporary staff increases during peak periods, such as at the start of the academic year of German universities.

3. Germany should try to expand its soft power – not only through more frequent high-level visits by ministers or state secretaries, which have been rather rare in the past, but also through expanded language promotion and educational cooperation. Given the significance that student mobility has for Morocco, Germany could, for example, increase the number of scholarships given through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Also, it should make better use of existing work relations and institutional structures, such as projects established through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) to facilitate skilled migration.

4. Germany should adapt slow-moving migration cooperation formats with other countries to ­allow partner countries to actively shape them. One of the most important lessons from migration cooperation with Morocco is this: the implementation of joint plans is more likely to be effective when the partner country has ownership – not just of the cooperation outcomes but of the cooperation format. The GMMP works primarily because the Moroccan side perceives it as its own instrument.

5. Finally, the German government should establish a unified list of countries that identifies priority partners applicable to all government units. Currently, different ministries and agencies prioritize different countries, complicating a coherent approach and unnecessarily tying up resources.