By Ashley Karen
Morocco and Spain have earmarked stepping up efforts to relaunch the tunnel that aims to connect the two countries beneath the Strait of Gibraltar.
Studies for an inter-continental fixed connection have been done at intermissions over 40 years under the coordination of state-owned entities Secegsa in Spain and SNED in Morocco. Nevertheless, the Moroccan-Spanish joint committee had not met since 2009.
Although Secegsa had not been assigned any budget in recent years, the association has now been delivered with €2·3m under the EU’s Recovery, Transformation & Resilience Plan. This will allow the partners to update the results of prior studies.
Spain’s Minister for Transport, Mobility & the Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, stated: “After 14 years since the meeting in Tanger in October 2009, we are going to give impetus to the studies for a project of high geostrategic importance for our countries and relations between Europe and Africa”.
The minister made her statements alongside Morocco’s Minister of Equipment, Nizar Baraka, on April 10, during a meeting that was part of the 43rd summit of the joint Spanish-Moroccan commission for the tunnel project.
She also added: “We are beginning a new stage in the revival of the fixed link project across the Strait of Gibraltar, which we launched in 1981, hand in hand.”
The program to start the milestone project goes back to the Spanish-Moroccan Common Declaration of June 16, 1979, in Fez, where King Hassan I of Morocco and King Juan Carlos I of Spain decided to work toward the project’s development in line with their commitment to promoting bilateral ties plus relations between Europe and Africa.
Spain’s government claimed: “The two parties agreed to jointly study the feasibility of permanent communication in the Strait of Gibraltar, for which purpose it was decided to carry out an exchange of scientific and technical information, through the creation of two mixed study companies”.
During this meeting, Sanchez remembered Spain’s unwavering commitment to supporting the project program, highlighting that both Morocco and Spain promote the project and have agreed to manage the development of an overall strategy and work plan for the next three years.
