 Well, I was asked to talk about EU-Morocco relations, and obviously, it's a very big realm of issues that can be covered. So I just thought I would focus on one issue, which is how is the EU promoting democracy in Morocco, in light also of the Arab Spring and the social movements that have been taking place throughout the region, including Morocco, the 20th February movement. And in doing so, I will also touch upon, hopefully, some issues relating to economic development, social economic development, the minister also mentioned. So how is democracy promoted in countries from international, well, in general, how does democracy come about in countries? We know that it comes about through economic development. There is those who say that if you increase theories of modernization, for example, say that if you increase urbanization, industrialization, middle-class GDP per capita, and education levels, economic development based on these criteria will ultimately lead to democracy or the foundations of democracy. Another way is the top-down process, the transitional theory. Elites, essentially, are initiating reforms, usually encouraged or induced by domestic and international events like the economic crisis, the loss of war, and so on, so the top-down process. And then we have the social movement theory, it's a very recent understanding of that, but it's also linked to older theories of revolution where it's a bottom-up way of democratizing. You have a strong social movement which is challenging power holders, using, for example, disruptive tactics and that type of thing. And then we have also the role of international actors in general, and this is where the EU comes. We have traditionally encouraged democracy through different means, using different methods like conditionality. But first of all, through war, using military force in position, World War II, when we imposed democracy in Germany, but also through conditionality, through rewards, carrot and stick approach, as we know, conditionality. And other indirect ways through socialization, a link between civil societies in indirect ways of transfusion of democratic values and ideas. So, based on these theories, I thought, well, let's isolate the EU. And how can the EU promote democracy in Morocco, based on these theories? Well, one is to contribute to socio-economic development in the country. In other words, increase those criteria of urbanization, industrialization, and so forth, as I mentioned. Induce reluctant elites to initiate democratic reforms. Number two, in other words, focusing on the top-down. And third, empower social movements, empower civil society. So I'm going to focus on these three issues in a short manner. The first one, continuing to socio-economic development. I have recent data from the UNDP and World Bank, which says that, first of all, in Morocco, in the last 10 years, we have seen increases in terms of urbanization, industrialization, education, GDP per capita in the middle class, urbanization of 3.64%, industrialization of 8.82%, education levels of 34%. It's up to around 60% education levels in Morocco, literacy rates under over 15 years old. GDP per capita, 42.19%. Very big increase. And the middle class, the middle class has remained the same. Inequality in Morocco, in fact, hasn't changed in the last 20 years. The gap between rich and poor has remained the same. It is actually following the pattern of many developing countries in the world where they have seen increases in GDP growth, but at the same time, not the reduce of inequality levels. You can talk about Brazil, India, China, even in Europe. Just to give an example, inequality in Morocco is similar to inequality in the United States of America. But it is twice as big as inequality in Sweden. So Scandinavian countries are doing a great job actually in creating this model of welfare capitalism, whereby they encourage entrepreneurship, they encourage economic development and competitiveness without necessarily also undermining their commitment to welfare traditions and providing to citizens and egalitarianism. Okay, these are positive. And let me also mention some positive, but do we know that these are actually as a result of the EU? Well, let's see what the EU has been doing. Since 1976, the EU with Morocco has provided significant financial aid through the cooperation agreement 1976, association agreement, the advance agreement in 2008. I'll give you a few examples. Under the cooperation agreement and the four financial protocols between 1970s and 1996, Morocco received from the EU a total of 1.91 billion euro. Most of this money has actually gone to socio-economic development, has gone to urbanization, rural development 46%, 70% in economic infrastructure, 15% in the private sector, vocational training, but very, very little in civil society. And I will come back to that, 0.4% for civil society. And the association agreement and the mid-term program 1995-2006, Morocco received from the EU, it was the largest recipient of EU money for all the North African region of 1.6 billion euros. Again, similar breakdowns in terms of the policies where the money went. Healthcare, justice reform, rural development, a little bit wider the scope. Again, civil society, very little, something like 1%. Under the advance status agreement, the European neighborhood policy instrument, 2007-2014, Morocco received 1.23 billion euros. Again, most of the money went to these socio-economic development factors. And Morocco, during the Arab Spring, also received an additional 18 million euros for other areas. Now, we don't know whether this money, what is the link between this money and the increases of indicators that are earlier mentioned in Morocco. The causality is very difficult to establish. It's very difficult. But nonetheless, we have definitely a policy from the EU contributing to socio-economic development in that area. At the same time, however, when you look at trade, and let me also mention that you have also signed the Deep Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. Again, they received significant money late. Well, there are negotiations for that, and they're about to receive significant money that is signed. But nonetheless, another dimension of socio-economic development has to come, not just through financial aid, all the things that I mentioned, but also through trade. How is the EU contributing to socio-economic development in Morocco through trade? Well, there are theories of center periphery theories, which indicate that usually the center, if we see the Europeans, visa-visa periphery are usually operating within a hierarchical relation when it comes to trade. Usually the center exports to the periphery manufactured goods, such as tractors, electronic machinery, chemicals, high-tech products, iron steel, in exchange for raw materials and agricultural products. Now, this has been the pattern. In that way, some theories, though, if you want of an equal theory of dependency, I talk that in those type of trade relations, it is a center who benefits more than the periphery, in the sense that there is an unequal exchange of product. Not everyone agrees to this view, but I think it's something that we have to have in Morocco, because if you look at the data between 1960 to 1970, not just in EU with Morocco relations, but also EU ACP, EU Africa relations, you have a huge disparity between what Africa is exporting to the EU, which is mainly raw materials and agricultural goods, and in exchange getting only imported, vastly manufactured goods, and all of these within a framework of specific tools like tariffs, quotas, taxes, which regulate these agreements. Now, some people say some of these tariffs can be more justful. In other words, they can be taking more into consideration the needs of the developing countries. That's also another idea that we might have to think about. Having said that, clearly, as I mentioned from the 1960s until the 1980s, this has been the pattern of EU-Morocco trade relations. Now, recently I've tried to acquire more data from the WTO, and I was surprised to see that Morocco is actually increasing its manufacture goods to the EU, particularly when it comes to machining and transport equipment, textiles, which is also manufacturing goods, clothing in particular. So, that, we say, traditional, if you want, historical, colonial relationship seems to be diminishing a little bit. In terms of that, Morocco is now expanding its exports to the EU, and not just to the EU, but also to other countries. Another key dimension of that historical relationship is that the center has many other peripheries which it trades with, whereas the periphery only trades with the center, and there is very little intra-periphery trade. In other words, Morocco historically had barely traded with Algeria, with Libya, with Tunisia, and with other countries in the region. 50% of its trade was with the EU, even higher in the earlier times, whereas now we can see Morocco also trading with the British countries, 12.7% with NAFTA, with China, with the American countries. Nonetheless, still the EU remains the main trading partner. So, it is an element of dependency, but not as much as before. I have to say that parenthesis here, that these data need to be analyzed. I just got the data three days ago. We haven't fully managed to analyze them, but anyone, especially from the embassy or anyone else who wants to email me, I can provide them in a more comprehensive way. So, when it comes to socioeconomic development, a huge part of it is trade. Morocco is making advances in that dimension in terms of expanding its trade and also expanding its manufactured products, and nonetheless, some level of dependency still remains on the EU. I recently interviewed a local Moroccan head of a company which exports, which creates clothing for denim. And he said, you know, he has 300 employees. Since the signing of the GATT liberalization agreements and the EU cotoning agreements, we have basically been struggling to compete, particularly with manufacturers from China who are based in Morocco. Seven, the cost of creating a gene for them is something like half of what we're doing. There's no way we can compete with them. And this is a result of some of these trade agreements, the GATT, the EU cotoning agreement and so forth. So we had to look also. We had to look in sub-Saharan Africa. We had to look in other markets which traditionally Morocco has not been associated with because most of the trade was with, but with a new globalized world in China. We have to look at otherwise we would go completely out of business. So in some ways we have to look at these trade agreements. I know there has been some type of disagreement between Morocco and the EU when it comes to, for example, restricting sensitive products for the EU. Agriculture, which these products where EU producers are sensitive in terms of competing with Moroccan producers, products like tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, garlic, clementine, strawberries, there are specific quotas and taris for these. They are called on the negative bracket, negative division or category where the EU is restricting. And that is clearly a result of basically the EU has more of a stronger hand in designing those agreements and Morocco still has that sort of smaller role in creating those agreements. Okay, empowering civil society, excuse me, elites, encouraging elites to reform. Well, the other dimension. I think the EU since 1995 with the Barcelona process has had in place a democratization policy. It's under the MEDA program and the European Economic Policy Instrument and also the European Initiative for Human Rights and Development. According to that, as I mentioned earlier, some of the money has been going in, as we say, well, some of the policies have been created as a way of carrot and stick approach. So, positive conditionality, but nonetheless positive conditionality. Positive conditionality means more encouragement, more carrots rather than sticks. So the EU essentially has been giving, has been, to put it a little bit simple, has been a little bit soft on Morocco on elites when it comes to encouraging to reform. But it has also been very encouraging. They have policies, for example, in funding democracy projects on citizenship, good governance, human rights, reconciliation, media and rights of children, women and disabled, just as a reform. But again, for these type of issues that I mentioned, only 4.3% of the total funds, and that's about 28 million euros out of half a billion euros have gone to these issues. Most of the money have gone to the other socioeconomic indicators that I mentioned. So, in other words, most of the money, they have sort of empowered civil society, not as much as they could, one can argue, but also with elites they could encourage a little bit more, particularly when it comes to providing rewards. For example, the Advanced Status Agreement was, a lot of people criticize that the Advanced Status Agreement was provided a little bit hastily. It was an agreement to reward Morocco for its reforms, even though on some areas Morocco could have done much more. I have the EU's report on what they thought about the Arab Spring reforms in Morocco in 2011, and they said, indeed Morocco has done significant reforms, the king retains however significant powers, the new constitution however brings someone a separation of powers, increasing the role of the parliament, the head of government, strengthening gender equality, guaranteeing freedom and so forth. But we need, the EU recommends to Morocco and invites Morocco to implement the principles establishing in the new constitution, especially adoption of basic laws, continuing reforms of good governance, improve the freedom of association, assembly, expression, and the press. So the EU is highlighting areas where Morocco is supposed to be democratizing, supposed to reform, but at the same time it's not withholding any rewards to Morocco in order to advance more the speedy of reform. So on one hand it's encouraging, but not as being a little bit soft on them. And the majority of the literature believes that the reason for that is, I think as Dr. Mertari mentioned, issues of security, the EU needs cooperation of Morocco when it comes to terrorism particularly, immigration, illegal immigration, very sensitive issue, and also trade, especially raw materials, phosphate and so forth. So yes, in that way Morocco is, well, the EU has been, perhaps some academics argue, not as committed or not as forceful in encouraging Morocco to democratize in certain areas. But we don't have necessarily evidence to indicate that negative conditionality works better than positive conditionality. And in other words, more sticks works better than more cards. We don't have any evidence of that. So perhaps the EU is following a good approach. Maybe this is a way to do it slowly, piecemeal, without disrupting relations. Nonetheless, this is a debate whether the EU should change a little bit its approach to the elites. Now when it comes to civil society, as I mentioned, a little funding goes to civil society, direct financial aid. Another case from the EU is that much of that funding goes to secular civil society groups. It barely reaches Islamic civil society groups, in other words, which is a big part of society in Morocco. This is because the EU is sort of reluctant or a little bit afraid of rising Islamist in Morocco. So they're more reluctant to allow the regime to tell them which society groups they should give money to, rather than going bottom up directly to these society groups on their own. There is a powerful application for NGOs to apply for EU funding. So there is an element of directness in that way. Having said that, a lot of those procedures they need to go through the state. So the state has a role in that. Having said that, let's say the other side of it is that we also interviewed a few Islamic groups. We asked them, you have this money available to you to promote your values. They're open in terms of, there is no restriction in terms of what type of culture or religious faith these groups have to have. There is no division in terms of religion. Why don't you apply? Many of them said, well, because we don't trust the EU. We think that they have another agenda. We don't necessarily believe in those values. So there is also responsibility from a lot of these groups that money is for them available from the EU to apply directly. But they are also reluctant to engage with the EU. So it's not just the EU's approach which somehow is responsible for excluding some aspects of the population. Also, those aspects of the population, the religious groups are not fully engaged or fully trusting those machineries. So in a recap, I would say that mixed results when it comes from the EU in promoting democracy in Morocco, I think it has contributed considerably, especially if we establish a causality link between financial aid and these increases of modernization criteria. The EU has contributed considerably to socio-economic development. Perhaps one area is the lack of the middle class reduction, the income inequality. When it comes to trade, again, I would say this is not as positive as the other dimension. I think when it comes to trade, Morocco can benefit much more from the EU market. The EU is willing to open up more its market and break down those tariffs and quotas and all these different tools that it uses in order to make agreements a little bit more favorable to there. When it comes to elites, I think, again, mixed results, we don't know fully whether positive conditionality is working. In democratic indexes, Morocco has dropped a little bit since the Arab Spring. According to the economic index, the freedom house index, Morocco has dropped a few places according to those criteria. Whereas countries like Tunisia and Egypt have significantly risen. Of course, Egypt now is a different case, but Tunisia is definitely a case where they have significantly risen in terms of democratic indexes. So perhaps the EU may need to reconsider its approach to the elites. When it comes to the society, I think this is definitely an area where it's easy for the EU to expand more, provide easily more money, and make that money, approach social movements and civil society groups, bottom up, indicate their genuine intentions in promoting children's rights, women's rights, poverty eradication, all these different norms which I think everyone can believe in and engage in without much controversy. And I think we thought necessarily, of course, alienating the existing regime, the elites, although I think the current extent approach, there is room for improvement for that. In other words, sometimes Morocco needs to be a little bit more accountable according to the objectives that are placed in the advanced studies, in the action plans and so forth. So the EU perhaps needs to, as we say, not just talk the talk, but also walk the walk and make Morocco accountable to those objectives that go in line with their EU democratic values and so forth. So this is my overall understanding.