A hard blow for the head of government. The unemployed graduates who signed the 20 July 2011 minutes with Abbas El Fassi have finally won their case.

The Rabat administrative court ruled on Thursday 23 May. It called on the government to integrate the signatories of the 20 July 2011 minutes into the civil service, and to compensate them financially and administratively by taking into account the date of signature.

This is what several members of the concerned unemployed graduate coordinations indicated to ALM. "Abdelilah Benkirane had challenged us to go to court, promising us that he would only apply the minutes if the court ruled in our favour. Today, the head of government no longer has any pretext for not respecting commitments made by the State", stressed Jamal Guilloul, one of the signatories of the minutes.

He added: "Crowning two years of waiting and protests, this judgment puts an end to an injustice and elitism: The head of government has always publicly displayed his refusal to recruit us, while behind the scenes, he was directly integrating several students from the Southern provinces into the civil service".

As a reminder, the minutes of 20 July 2011 were signed by the Abbas El Fassi government with the coordinations of unemployed graduates.

The previous government committed under this agreement to recruit the signatories of the minutes, numbering more than 3,500 members, directly and without a competitive examination. But with the arrival of the Islamist government, Abdelilah Benkirane categorically refused to apply the minutes, arguing that its provisions are "unconstitutional and not in accordance with the civil service statute".

"The provisions of the minutes violate the principle of equality of citizens to occupy positions in the civil service. Recruitment into the civil service will be carried out on the basis of meritocracy, in accordance with Article 31 of the Constitution", the head of the Executive had stressed in May 2012 during the monthly session devoted to general policy. Remarks that did not please the unemployed graduates at all. In reaction, the latter had several times raised their tone and let their anger rumble in the capital, by organising several sit-ins, marches and hunger strikes, or even by occupying ministries.

The coordination committees of unemployed graduates who signed the 20 July 2011 minutes had even sent a letter to Idriss Yazami, president of the National Human Rights Council, and expressed their request to see HM King Mohammed VI intervene.