The European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings of December 2016 and February 2018 state that Western Sahara has a separate and distinct status from Morocco and hence no trade agreement concluded between the European Union (EU) and Morocco can be applied to Western Sahara without the consent of its people. Nonetheless, the amended versions of the Agricultural and Fishery Agreements proposed by the Commission and approved by the Parliament, do include Western Sahara. EU records demonstrate that the legislative iter of both Agreements has been marked by pre-existing conflict of interests.

This paper aims to explain the reasons and means of the EU’s double play in the Western Sahara conflict. On the one hand, the EU reiterates the official position of “its support to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s efforts to achieve a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara”. However, on the other hand, the EU continues to include Western Sahara in the territorial scope of its agreements with Morocco, disregarding EU and International Law.

At an EU internal level, these events show the erosion of the legitimacy of the EU judiciary power on the ground of its neglect by the EU legislative and executive powers. At an international level, the EU strategy entails the implicit acceptance of Morocco's territorial model, which prevails over the rights of the Sahrawi people to a referendum on self-determination, demanded by the UN since 1966.

The review of academic literature along with the analysis of primary sources, such as EU’s official documents and diplomatic archives, examines the Western Sahara conflict within the framework of post-colonial relations between Morocco and the EU.

The dispatches of the French Ambassador Colin De Verdière of the Eighties as well as the written answers of European High Commissioner Mogherini reveal that European diplomacy has continuously tried to avoid the possibility of a Sahrawi state, with the consequent advance of the Moroccan project of large autonomy.

This political ambiguity, which persists from the Seventies to the present day, makes the referendum on self-determination an intentionally missed objective, as the decolonisation of the territory is.