Legal Mobilisation in EU Foreign Policy <i>vis-à-vis</i> Occupation : A Comparison of Israel/Palestine and Morocco/Western Sahara

How does the use of law by non-state actors (NSAs) influence EU foreign policy? A comparative analysis of the cases of Israel/Palestine and Morocco/Western Sahara demonstrates that legal mobilisation by non-state actors has had divergent impacts on EU foreign policy. On the one hand, legal mobilisation led to long-term effects in the case of EU foreign policy towards Israel/Palestine: through lobbying based on legal framing, NSAs contributed to the reframing of EU-Israel relations, leading to the exclusion of the occupied Palestinian territories from the scope of EU-Israel agreements. On the other hand, litigation in the case of Morocco/Western Sahara had a short-term impact by annulling EU-Morocco agreements due to their extension to Western Sahara without the consent of the Sahrawi people. However, this did not result in a change in the overall understanding of EU-Morocco relations, as reflected in renewed attempts to include Western Sahara under EU-Morocco agreements and in the increasing number of member states recognising Morocco’s Autonomy Plan for – and in some cases sovereignty over – Western Sahara as the most viable option. This comparison shows that mobilising law can be a powerful tool for NSAs to influence EU foreign policy, but this requires skilful entrepreneurs able to apply legal principles to concrete facts, as well as a favourable context, to ensure that when legal inconsistencies are highlighted, the EU is capable of engaging in a reframing process to correct them.