(Reuters) Morocco has rebuffed a European Union request to take back third-party nationals who reach Europe from the North African kingdom, its interior ministry said on Tuesday.
EU migration commissioner [Ylva] Johansson visited Rabat this month to seek a readmission agreement allowing the 27-nation bloc to return migrants to Morocco in the face of a surge in arrivals to Spain’s Canary Islands.
The request was rejected, the Moroccan ministry said. “Morocco is not into the logic of subcontracting and insists that each country accepts its responsibility towards its nationals,” Moroccan migration and border control chief at the Interior Ministry Khalid Zerouali said by email.
