The Diplomat in Spain

View of Gibraltar from La Linea de la Concepción.

The Diplomat. 04/08/2018

The recent study of the consultancy Ipsos in which the importance of the smuggling of tobacco from Gibraltar in the Spanish economy is highlighted, has led the Executive of Fabian Picardo to refute this information with his own data.

The Ipsos study points out that Andalusia is the autonomous region where contraband tobacco is consumed the most, with 30.4% of total Spanish consumption in the second quarter of 2018, followed very closely by the Community of Madrid (6.9%) and Catalonia (6.4%). The proximity to Gibraltar -from where most of the illicit tobacco comes, 38.4% – is the main reason why Andalusia heads this ranking.

The Gibraltarian government criticizes that the study does not reveal whether a discarded package is smuggled or not. «A package that enters the analysis may have been lawfully acquired having entered the legal franchise of a traveler from Gibraltar», he argues. To do this, Picardo takes advantage of another KPGM consultancy study published in 2017.

This study indicates that Spain, with 4.6% consumption, is one of the EU countries least affected by smuggled or counterfeit tobacco. In the United Kingdom, the corresponding figure amounts to 14.3% and in France, to 14.8%. In addition, 92% of the tax-free tobacco consumed in Spain was of legal origin, «that is, introduced by the 13.7 million Spanish travelers in 2016 to the Canary Islands, Andorra and Gibraltar».

In this sense, the Rock remembers that Spain is the EU’s only country with three levels of price for tobacco in its jurisdiction: one for peninsula and the Balearics, another fixed for Ceuta and Melilla and a third tax free for the Canary Islands.

The British colony receives 12 million visitors a year and argues that it imports tobacco for legal sales to both its domestic market and these visitors. «The same way do Andorra, Ceuta, Melilla or Canary Islands, whose imports of tobacco also clearly exceed domestic consumption», he said in a statement.

Spain has a specific regulation for the maximum amount of tobacco that travelers from these destinations can take, reserving the most restrictive for Gibraltar. Thus, a person can enter Spain from Andorra with 300 cigarettes. The figure is lower in the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla (200). In the case of Gibraltar, 200 cigarettes are also allowed, except for Campo de Gibraltar residents, who are allowed only 80 when crossing the Gate.