Albares assures that customs in Ceuta and Melilla will open before the summit with Morocco, with a week to go

MADRID, 24 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, assured this Tuesday that the reopening of the Melilla customs office and the opening of a new one in Ceuta will take place as planned before the summit with Morocco, for which It is one week left.

"The entire Spanish-Moroccan road map is going to be fulfilled", stressed the minister when asked about this issue during the press conference with his Moldovan counterpart, Nicu Popescu.

"This first passage of goods will take place before the high-level meeting", scheduled for February 1 and 2 in Rabat, he assured, recalling that he and the Moroccan Foreign Minister, Naser Boruta, had announced it. .

According to Albares, the teams from the two countries "are working on the last details and the specific announcement will be made at the right time," without wishing to advance a date.

This was one of the key points of the joint declaration signed on April 7 after the meeting between the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and King Mohamed VI in Rabat. In it, both governments announced that "the full normalization of the movement of people and goods" would be restored "in an orderly manner, including the appropriate customs and people control devices at land and sea levels."

It was Sánchez himself who announced that there would be customs in the two autonomous cities in the press conference he offered at the end of the meeting that put an end to the serious diplomatic crisis caused by the reception in Spain of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, to be treated for COVID-19 and his position on the Sahara.

Thus, the president said that the Melilla customs office, which Morocco closed unilaterally in 2018, was going to be reopened, and a facility of this type was going to be opened in Ceuta, where it never existed. To this end, in the latter autonomous city, a prefabricated booth painted in blue has been installed in recent weeks and on which the logo of the Tax Agency can be seen.

In an interview with Europa Press on January 1, Albares indicated that the will of the two countries is that "it be an orderly and gradual opening." "There are images from the past that we do not want to see again," he stressed, ruling out that the so-called "atypical trade" reappears.