Why President Macron chose Morocco for his first visit outside Europe

AmidAmid a vociferous protest movement in Morocco, French President Emmanuel Macron chose the kingdom as the destination for his first official visit outside Europe just a month after his election. According to officials at the Élysée Palace the trip was a purely private visit to King Mohammed VI.

It was nevertheless a sign of support for the Moroccan monarchy after a turbulent period in Franco-Moroccan relations under the previous president, François Hollande. But in visiting Rabat, Macron broke with the tradition since Jacques Chirac's second presidential mandate from 2002 to 2007 under which the French president reserves his first visit to France's former North African colonies for Algeria – with whom Morocco has strained relations.

However, though Macron preferred Rabat for his trip on June 14th-15th, he nevertheless sent his foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to Algiers the same week. During his presidential campaign he had visited both Algeria and Tunisia, which had “caused a slight disappointment on the Moroccan side”, according to a diplomatic source.

In an interview with Jeune Afrique in April, Macron sought to be reassuring and promised to visit Rabat. “I have already been to Algeria and Tunisia, and as I have not yet been able to go to Morocco, I will go there very soon after my election, if the French people put their trust in me,” he declared.

The diplomatic source, who declined to be named, said the new French presidency had elicited some puzzlement in Rabat. “The Moroccans were used to political interpretations that have now been muddied by Emmanuel Macron. This time they did not really know how to read things.”

The Moroccan monarchy has always been able to forge very close links with all France's elites, including those in political circles. It has benefited from significant contacts in the inner circles of all presidents, and sometimes there has been a direct long-standing, personal relationship between the king and the president.

Hollande could count on the influence of several leading socialist figures, such as former ministers Élisabeth Guigou or Jack Lang, both of whom sometimes served as intermediaries during the previous presidency between Paris and the Makhzen – a term denoting the web of power exercised from the royal palace. This served Hollande well at the height of the diplomatic row between the two countries in 2014.

Rabat apparently feels more unprepared with Macron, according to several sources. “All the usual avenues have been closed. There do not seem to be any 'close friends', as they say in Morocco,” said Pierre Vermeren, history professor at Paris Panthéon University who specialises in contemporary Morocco and the colonial history of the Maghreb. “This is a major change compared with other presidencies.”

Kader Abderrahim, research fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) and an expert on the Maghreb and Islamism, agreed there was a clear break with the past. “For Algeria and Morocco there is no longer as intimate a relationship as that under Chirac, which was continued with Sarkozy and Hollande. There is a change of generation. On Macron's side there is a less cosy vision of the Maghreb.”

This time the French delegation did not include a government minister or a captain of industry. There were, however, several well-known, mostly Franco-Moroccan, personalities with extensive knowledge of the region. They included author Leïla Slimani, researcher Gilles Kepel and Haïba Ouaissi, chairwoman of Club XXI^e siècle, a group promoting social diversity. Ouaissi was present at Macron's investiture on May 14th. A young volunteer from Macron's new party, La République En Marche (LREM), was also on the delegation.

Another delegation member, Bariza Khiari, a senator who joined LREM from the Socialist Party, was full of enthusiasm. “With Macron there isn't the same legacy. He's turning everything upside down. I don’t see how international relations would escape that. It's a new page being turned.”

Nevertheless, the choices and the programme for the stay gave the impression of a certain continuity. It was an express visit, with Macron landing at 5 pm and leaving at 9 am the next day, and entirely personal, presidential spokespeople insisted at a news briefing.

Macron hardly saw anyone except the king. Mohammed VI met him at the airport, and the French president then had an audience at the royal palace before attending Iftar, the meal breaking the Ramadan fast, at the monarch's family residence. “The aim is to get to know each other,” a French official said.

No other meeting was organised with political or economic players or with representatives of civil society. Élysée officials saw nothing strange in that, replying only that a first meeting was an important signal.

Morocco is currently experiencing the most acute social unrest since Mohammed VI was crowned in 1999. The  movement began last October in Al Hoceima, a city on the Mediterranean coast just north of the Rif Mountains. Mouhcine Fikri, a local fisherman, was crushed to death trying to retrieve illegally caught swordfish that police had confiscated and thrown into a garbage truck.

Since then, protests against corruption and abuses in the Moroccan administration have spread beyond the Rif region. A wave of arrests since late May has not halted the movement. On June 11th the biggest demonstration since the start of Mohammed VI's reign was held in Rabat.

The day before the French president took off for his trip, several associations and figures from the Maghreb denounced both the repression in the Rif region and the blocking of Syrian refugees at the Algeria-Morocco border in an open letter to Macron published on Mediapart.

“Your impending visit to Morocco could be an opportunity to relay the fears and preoccupations over the violations of fundamental liberties and breaches of international conventions to the highest authorities of this state,” they wrote. Two of them said they had been contacted the same day by Macron's office, acknowledging receipt of the letter and promising a meeting after the presidential visit to Rabat.

'This is the most serious crisis the king has faced since he was crowned'

Macron was extremely cautious while in Rabat. “I reaffirmed France's desire to accompany as far as possible the ambitious reforms being implemented today by the King,” he said, citing institutional reform in 2011 when some of the monarch's powers were devolved to the prime minister, and the fight against social inequality. It was a statement which some could see as both paternalistic and uncritical.

Asked about the situation in the Rif region, Macron said he had raised the matter “in a very direct manner”, but added: “It is not up to me to pronounce judgement on a subject relating to internal politics here.” The king wishes to “calm the situation by responding to the manifestation of these movements and by bringing forward concrete answers” said President Macron.

He said his discussion with the king “does not lead me to fear any desire for repression but rather a long-term response to the underlying causes”. The royal palace has, however, remained silent over the past few weeks and its response so far has been limited to a wave of arrests.

“This is the most serious crisis the king has faced since he was crowned,” said Abderrahim of IRIS. “He thought the crisis, which has been going on for seven months, was contained and extinguished. But the situation of citizens in relation to the administration, abuses of power or corruption are subjects you hear about everywhere in Morocco.” The entire country, he said, “shares the same perception of a bloated administration that adopted bad habits”.

Fouad Abdelmoumni, a human rights activist who is general secretary of Transparency Maroc, said there is a strong desire for change in the country, but also a fear of the unknown. “Here, the examples of Libya, Syria or Yemen are very real,” he said. “Faced with that, after the signs of 2011, [editor’s note: the protest movement of February 20th in Morocco] the state very quickly regained confidence. It retreated into an authoritarian and corrupt posture.”

Abdelmoumni has expected little from France following the diplomatic incident in 2014, when the boss of Moroccan counter-espionage was brought in for questioning by a French judge. The affair concluded a year later with the signature of an agreement for mutual judiciary assistance that human rights activists opposed. “France can no longer claim to be guided by humanitarian values and human rights,” Abdelmoumni said.

Among the dignitaries assembled to greet Macron on his arrival at the airport was the very same head of counter-espionage, Abdellatif Hammouchi, who had subsequently been awarded the Legion of Honour to compensate for the affront he had suffered in 2014. Hammouchi was in the front row, as was General Housni Benslimane, head of the royal gendarmerie, who was named in an international arrest warrant issued in 2007 as part of the investigation into the disappearance of Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris in 1965.

In recent weeks French international news broadcaster FRANCE 24 has borne the brunt of Morocco's ire over its coverage of demonstrations in the Rif region when the powers that be prevented it from filming a monthly broadcast for its Arab language channel. “The authorities suddenly let it be known that we needed accreditation,” said Marc Saikali, director of FRANCE 24. “We requested one but we did not get it.” Its French and English-language channels, which are broadcast in Morocco, were not affected.

Macron's priority, like that of his predecessors, is obviously the preservation of “common interests”. During his visit the French president raised the Libyan crisis with Mohammed VI, a subject that had been at the heart of foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian's visit to Algeria two days earlier. The break of diplomatic relations with Qatar by several Arab states was also on the agenda.

On this latter subject, both France and Morocco aspire to be intermediaries and are increasing their exchanges with officials in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on one hand and with Qatari officials on the other. “We have no interest in there being tension between the countries that have spoken out in this conflict, firstly because the Gulf needs to remain calm and stable, and then because all these countries are involved in crises in Syria and Libya,” Macron said.

The week before his visit to Morocco, Macron had several telephone conversations with leaders in the region, and these exchanges are likely to continue.

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• The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Sue Landau