Escalating rivalry between Algeria and Morocco closes the Maghreb-Europe pipeline

Abstract

With the price of gas, oil and coal climbing in the international markets, the Maghreb-Europe Gas Pipeline (MGE) closed on November 1st 2021, after a 25-year transit deal expired without renewal. Hopes were high, when it was inaugurated in 1996, that Algerian gas transiting through Morocco to the Iberian Peninsula would encourage joint ventures in chemicals and fertilisers and insert the Maghreb into the world economy. Today, the empty pipeline also speaks an EU unable to think strategically about a region which is important for its security because its member states are divided. The closure of the Maghreb-Europe pipeline will further encourage the economic decoupling of countries on the two shores of the Western Mediterranean.