The Diplomat in Spain

The Diplomat

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, EU and Cooperation, Arancha González Laya, held a video conference yesterday afternoon with the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups in the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Joint Committee for the EU to inform them of the agreement reached with the United Kingdom on Gibraltar on 31 December, after it had been leaked to the newspaper El País.

The call came after PP and Ciudadanos had expressed their displeasure that the pre-agreement, which will serve as a framework for the negotiation of a future agreement between the United Kingdom and the EU on Gibraltar, had been made known earlier in the other European capitals, according to information from the aforementioned newspaper, than between the different political parties, despite the Minister having promised to appear in Congress to give full details of the agreement.

However, during the informal meeting, González Laya did not go into detail about what was included in the document, the authenticity of which was confirmed, in the hope that the minister would finally be able to appear at the Congress, “with light and stenography”, the spokesperson for Citizens, Marta Martín, told Europa Press. She agreed with the minister’s explanations that the leak did not originate from her department and that “they have already complained”.

For her part, the spokesperson for the PP in the Foreign Affairs Committee, Valentina Martínez, stressed that the document, which the Ministry had sent to them five minutes before the meeting and which is in line with the one published, is the starting point for negotiations between London and Brussels and represents “the highest of our aspirations”. “We will see what is left”, he stressed. Although he regretted that the rest of the capitals knew about it before the parties did, he welcomed the “blessed leak”, since they finally have the document that had been requested since the agreement was announced on 31 December.

According to Martínez, the minister expressed her desire to appear and her willingness to “clarify all doubts” and reiterated the need for Gibraltar to be a “state policy”.