Morocco consolidates its position as the first origin of Spanish imports of fruits and vegetables by value. Between January and April, Spain acquired the Maghreb country merchandise for 672 million euros, and in the first semester the economic volume amounted to 899.5 million, with double digit growths with respect to 2024. The organizations of the sector, headed by FEPEX, ask the European Commission to strictly apply the judgment of the EU Court of Justice on the EU on the Western Sahara Rabat
If we look at the photo of the first four -month period, this shows a sustained increase in purchases and a pull of volume. According to Fepexwhich works with official Datacomex data, the value imported from Morocco in January-April reached 672 million euros, while the volume grew by 26% year-on-year up to 254,385 tons.
You may be interested
Several retirees over 80 are not cut by giving advice: “We started working at age 9, we first struggled to survive, now the young people live from their parents”
A Guinean who has been in Spain for 8 months: “We do not receive right aid when we arrived, nor are they waiting for you with 1,000 euros and an iPhone at the airport”
In the accumulated, from January to June, the Spanish importation of Moroccan fruits and vegetables reached 899.5 million euros, 33% more than a year earlier, which reinforces Morocco as the first supplier for value in the national market. In volume, it continues behind France, but cuts distances.
The tomato concentrates part of the competitive tension. In the last decade, Spanish import imports from Morocco increased by 269%, from 18,045 tons in 2014 to 66,624 in 2024, while the Spanish export of tomato to the EU fell 25% in the same period. The sector warns of loss of profitability and displacement of the national product in linear.
The matter has reached the European Parliament Petitions Commission, since the Spanish MEPs Carmen Crespo (PP) and Mireia Borrás (Vox) asked to monitor compliance with the entry price system and review the agricultural agreement with Morocco. Crespo denounced an “unacceptable imbalance” for producers in southern Spain and both claimed to execute European jurisprudence on Sahara.
It must be remembered that this legal dimension is key, because after the failure of the TJUE of October 4, 2024, it annulled the fishing agreements (published in this link) and agriculture (it can be consulted in this link) between the EU and Morocco for lack of consent of the Saharawi people, with a period of adaptation for the agricultural. The sentence, rectified on January 15, 2025, reinforces that the productions of Western Sahara must be excluded from tariff advantages and correctly identified in origin.
Sources of the sector insist that a part of the pressure in prices derives from insufficient control of the border entry pricing system, particularly in the tomato, and ask Brussels measures to stop possible elusions. The issue is on the MEP and commission table, which has not yet detailed how Tjue’s failures will fully apply.