Brussels is obsessed with a ghost story.
Walk into any European foreign ministry today, and you will hear the exact same conventional wisdom repeated like a sacred chant: The Morocco-Algeria rivalry is forcing Europe to choose sides, destabilizing the Western Mediterranean, and hijacking the European Union's regional strategy.
It is a comfortable, tidy narrative. It gives diplomat corps a convenient scapegoat for their own paralyzed strategy in North Africa. But it is fundamentally wrong.
The bilateral spat between Rabat and Algiers is not remaking Europe’s policy. European desperation is. What analysts naively call a foreign policy crisis is actually a self-inflicted leverage collapse caused by Europe's frantic, uncoordinated rush to secure non-Russian energy and police its maritime borders.
Morocco and Algeria are not forcing Europe into a corner. Europe walked into the corner itself, handed both nations a paintbrush, and offered to pay for the paint.
The Lazy Consensus on the Western Mediterranean
The standard analysis goes like this: Algeria cuts off gas via the Maghreb-Europe pipeline; Morocco leverages migration and counter-terrorism coordination; Spain makes a sudden historical pivot on the Western Sahara; France tries to play both sides and pisses off everyone. The consensus view treats these events as reactive European missteps in the face of escalating North African tension.
That view misses the entire structural mechanic at play.
I spent years watching European policy teams draft white papers on Mediterranean integration while completely ignoring supply chain realities. European capitals love to talk about "strategic autonomy" in public. In private, they operate out of sheer tactical panic.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe’s energy security strategy collapsed overnight. Capitals did not develop a coherent, unified North Africa policy. They engaged in a dog-eat-dog scramble for pipeline capacity and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Algeria did not suddenly become a geopolitical mastermind overnight. Algiers simply looked at a desperate Rome, Paris, and Berlin and realized it held the gas tap. Morocco did not pull off a diplomatic miracle by securing recognition of its Western Sahara autonomy plan. Rabat merely recognized that Madrid and Berlin were so terrified of uncontrolled migration flows that they would trade long-standing diplomatic positions for border enforcement.
The rivalry between Rabat and Algiers is an old, predictable regional cold war that has lasted for decades. What changed was not the intensity of their dispute, but the absolute decay of European leverage.
The Energy Illusion: Gas, Power, and Pipedreams
Look at the mechanics of the energy trade. The popular media narrative claims Algeria used its natural gas weapon to punish Spain for backing Morocco's autonomy plan over Western Sahara.
Let us dismantle that myth with actual market realities.
Algeria's decision to close the Maghreb-Europe Pipeline in late 2021 was an expensive piece of political theater, but it did not leave Spain freezing in the dark. Spain simply imported more Algerian gas via the direct Medgaz pipeline and supplemented the rest with LNG imports from global markets, including the United States.
The real loser in that maneuver was not Spain or Morocco. It was Algeria's long-term status as a reliable energy partner to Western Europe.
By weaponizing infrastructure, Algiers proved to European buyers that piped Algerian gas carries a geopolitical risk premium. Italy jumped at the chance to sign massive supply deals with Sonatrach, celebrating Rome’s new position as Europe’s primary gas hub for North African supply. But Italian strategists made the same mistake Spain made decades earlier: trading dependency on one unpredictable autocratic exporter for dependency on another.
Meanwhile, Morocco shifted its energy gaze toward renewable infrastructure and green hydrogen ambitions. European firms lined up to invest billions in Moroccan solar and wind projects, promising to beam clean electricity straight to the United Kingdom and continental Europe via subsea cables.
Here is the trade-off that nobody in Brussels wants to admit: replacing fossil fuel dependency on Algeria with renewable energy dependency on Morocco does not solve Europe's strategic vulnerability. It merely swaps the commodity.
If you depend on Algiers for the electricity running your heavy industry, or Rabat for the green hydrogen driving your net-zero transition, you do not have a foreign policy. You have an extraction agreement where the suppliers dictate the terms.
The Security Paradox: Paying to Be Extorted
On the security front, the policy failure is even more acute.
European capitals operate under a deep, visceral terror of two things: unchecked African migration and unchecked Sahel terrorism. Both Morocco and Algeria understand this terror precisely, and both exploit it brilliantly.
Consider how border security actually works on the ground:
- Morocco controls the physical gateway to Western Europe via Ceuta, Melilla, and the Atlantic maritime route to the Canary Islands.
- Algeria controls the vast, porous desert corridor connecting the Sahel—where military juntas and mercenary groups now run rampant—to the Mediterranean basin.
Instead of leveraging its massive economic size to set the rules of engagement, Europe allowed itself to be blackmailed by both sides.
When Germany or Spain raised human rights concerns or international law arguments regarding Western Sahara, Rabat tightened or loosened border controls. The moment thousands of migrants crossed into Spanish enclaves, European diplomatic resistance folded like a cheap tent. Within months, major European powers aligned with Morocco’s position on the Western Sahara.
European diplomats call this "pragmatic realism." In reality, it is a capitulation that destroys European credibility on the global stage. You cannot lecture the global south on international law, sovereign borders, and territorial integrity while quietly selling out your own declared principles the second a few boats hit the Canary Islands.
Algeria uses the exact same playbook on Sahel security. Algiers positions itself as the indispensable regional referee, warning Europe that any attempt to bypass Algerian mediation in Mali or Niger will lead to total regional collapse. Yet, despite decades of Algerian "mediation," the Sahel has degraded into an absolute chaos vector. European defense officials know this, but they continue to pay homage to Algiers because they have built no secondary security architecture in the region.
The Myth of the Unified European Response
Is there a cohesive European policy for North Africa? No. There are twenty-seven separate national anxieties disguised as a foreign policy.
France wants to rebuild its historic footprint in Algeria to secure cheap energy and maintain military influence, which infuriates Morocco and alienates Rabat. Spain wants absolute quiet on its southern border at any cost, leading Madrid to abandon decades of diplomatic neutrality to appease Rabat, which infuriates Algeria. Italy plays its own game, undercutting French energy giants in North Africa to build its own regional energy grid.
This internal European cannibalism is what fuels the Morocco-Algeria escalation.
When Algiers sees Rome lining up to buy gas regardless of Algerian regional aggression, Algiers feels emboldened. When Rabat sees Madrid, Berlin, and Washington bowing to its territorial demands to keep the border gates shut, Rabat feels invincible.
The regional rivalry is not remaking Europe's policy. The total collapse of European diplomatic unity has created a vacuum that Morocco and Algeria are rationally, logically, and ruthlessly exploiting.
They are doing exactly what competent sovereign states ought to do: maximizing their strategic position against a fragmented, desperate neighbor.
The Brutal Truth: How Europe Can Regain Leverage
If European policymakers actually want to stop being dragged around by North African geopolitics, they need to stop blaming Rabat and Algiers and start fixing their own structural stupidity.
First, Europe must stop pretending it can maintain a neutral, fence-sitting position on regional disputes while simultaneously demanding total cooperation on energy and border control. That approach is dead. It produces the exact opposite of stability; it incentivizes both Maghreb powers to test European breaking points.
Second, the EU must centralize its energy procurement and border security agreements. As long as individual European countries negotiate separate side deals with Sonatrach or Moroccan authorities, North African leaders will play Paris against Rome, and Madrid against Berlin. A single purchasing bloc for energy and a unified, European-administered maritime border strategy would instantly shift leverage back across the Mediterranean.
Finally, European strategists need to accept the cost of their choices. If you want cheap gas and locked borders without building your own domestic energy infrastructure or handling your own asylum processing, you are going to pay a heavy geopolitical tax. That tax comes in the form of compromised values, diplomatic humiliation, and total policy paralysis.
Stop blaming the Morocco-Algeria rivalry for Europe's geopolitical irrelevance in the Mediterranean.
Fix your energy grid, secure your own borders, act as a single market, or get used to taking orders from Rabat and Algiers. Those are your only options. Choose one.
