France and Morocco’s industrial partnership navigates new european policy push

For several months, Paris has been actively lobbying the European Union, advocating for a significant shift in its economic approach. The French government contends that European competitiveness can no longer solely rely on open markets and global competition. Instead, it necessitates a robust industrial policy, favoring European industries in strategic sectors, and actively reducing dependencies, particularly on China. Within the European Commission, Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné is championing the proposed industrial acceleration regulation. Despite internal compromises that have scaled back its initial ambitions, France maintains an assertive stance. It now seeks to broaden the text’s scope, extending European preference mechanisms in public procurement, purchasing, and subsidies beyond clean technologies, energy-intensive industries, and electric vehicles, to include shipbuilding, railway equipment, and the chemical sector.

These very sectors, however, are precisely where Franco-Moroccan industrial cooperation is most advanced. France arguably stands as the EU member state whose productive apparatus is most deeply intertwined with Morocco’s. This unique integration shapes its position: Paris champions an exacting “Made in Europe” while simultaneously having cultivated a two-decade-long co-industrialization strategy with a country outside the EU bloc. In the automotive industry, Renault’s factories in Tangier and Stellantis’s facilities in Kenitra now operate as direct extensions of French production lines. Component manufacturers in Morocco supply parts directly to European industrial sites. A similar dynamic is unfolding in aeronautics, where companies like Safran, Daher, and Latécoère have progressively integrated Moroccan industrial capabilities into their value chains. The Kingdom is no longer merely a subcontracting workshop; it actively contributes to the competitiveness of French and broader European industrial output. This integration is now expanding into increasingly strategic domains, including batteries for electric vehicles, green hydrogen, critical materials, port infrastructure, and digital technologies.

«France likely stands as the EU member state with the most intricately woven production apparatus connected to Morocco’s»

Paris’s objective is not to isolate Europe but to prevent a broad “Made with Europe” concept – one that might indiscriminately encompass all eighty or so of the Union’s commercial partners – from diluting the essence of European preference. France advocates for a more discerning approach: distinguishing between countries that genuinely contribute to European competitiveness and supply chain security, and those that remain mere external suppliers, or even pose a threat to European sovereignty.

How widely this vision will be embraced remains to be seen. By mid-July, the 27 member states are expected to conduct an initial political assessment of the ongoing work within the Council on the industrial acceleration regulation. Germany’s stance will be pivotal. Berlin had long viewed French proposals for European industrial preference with caution, as Germany’s powerful export sector feared commercial restrictions from Beijing and potential Chinese retaliation against its automotive industry. However, under the pressure of an unprecedented industrial crisis and intensified domestic political debate fueled by the rise of the AfD, Germany can no longer simply champion classic free trade. Could selective openness to trusted partners represent a potential compromise between Paris and Berlin? This notion will be central to determining the future of the Franco-Moroccan industrial partnership. While France has never officially requested Morocco’s inclusion among future trusted partners, its overall industrial and diplomatic strategy positions the Kingdom as a natural candidate for such recognition.

The battle will also unfold within the European Parliament, where two French rapporteurs hold key positions in the examination of the regulation. A particular responsibility will fall upon them, as well as upon the French delegations: to ensure that the new regulatory boundaries currently being drawn by the Union do not undermine the future of the Moroccan-French industrial partnership.