Spanish Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sanchez, stated, Tuesday, that Morocco and Spain have moved to a new phase in the resumption of the project of the fixed link of the Strait of Gibraltar.
“’We are entering a new phase in the resumption of the fixed link project of the Strait of Gibraltar, which we started in 1981 with the two companies, Secegsa and la Société Nationale Marocaine d’Etudes du Détroit de Gibraltar (SNED),” stated Sanchez, who co-chaired Monday, with the Moroccan Minister of Equipment and Water, Nizar Baraka, the 43rd meeting of the Joint Moroccan-Spanish Committee of the fixed link of the Strait of Gibraltar project.
Quoted in the Spanish Ministry of Transport, Mobility, and Urban Agenda’s statement, Sanchez stated that “after 14 years since October 2009 in Tangier, we will give impetus to the studies of a project of maximum geostrategic importance for our countries and for relations between Europe and Africa.”
The Spanish Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda stated that the meetings of the joint committee were held following the Moroccan-Spanish high-level meeting held in Rabat in February, during which “the two countries reaffirmed their commitment to resuming studies of the fixed link project.”
In this regard, the committee meeting allowed the endorsement of the actions undertaken jointly by la Société Nationale Marocaine d’Etudes du Détroit de Gibraltar (SNED) and its Spanish counterpart, Secegsa, since 2009.
The Spanish ministry further added that in accordance with the conclusions of the joint committee, “the two parties encouraged the project’s exposure and agreed to address the development of a comprehensive strategy and work plan for the upcoming three years, which might include a feasibility analysis of the construction of a survey gallery to identify the geomechanical characteristics of the project.”
The Spanish Ministry added that this meeting also coincided with the reactivation of the Secegsa, following several years without a significant budgetary allocation, and the commission of studies to analyze the feasibility of the intercontinental fixed link for telecommunications and energy transport.
In this sense, the Spanish Ministry recalled that the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan (RRTP), adopted by the Spanish government, provides €2.3 million of European funds to update the studies related to the project.
