Exploiting or helping developing countries?

Mauritania

The EU reached a deal this summer for a €305 million fisheries agreement with Mauritania to run until 2011. It was signed just before a military coup on 6 August, which unseated the country's first democratically elected president. The European Commission took a decision on 29 August to suspend payment of the first instalment of €86m, as all non-essential funding was frozen. The money was unfrozen on 13 October. According to a Commission official, the payment went ahead because the Mauritanian authorities were able to provide reassurances that conditions for sound financial management were still in place. Had the freeze continued until 15 October, Mauritania would have had a right to suspend the whole deal, which would have hurt the fishing fleets of Spain, Italy, France, Greece and Portugal, which stood to benefit from it.

Morocco

The fisheries agreement with Morocco, the EU's second largest, caused outrage in 2006 when it was discovered to include the territorial waters of the Western Sahara. Ownership of the territory is disputed between the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi independence movement. No EU country formally recognises the territory as part of Morocco. The inclusion of the Western Sahara waters was heavily criticised by some groups in the European Parliament, not least because of reports by Amnesty International and the World Organisation Against Torture about human rights violations by Moroccan authorities against the region's Sahrawi people. Attempts in the Parliament, during the adoption of its non-binding opinion on the deal, to pass amendments criticising the inclusion of the Western Sahara failed to win sufficient support.