The Diplomat
The latest amended version of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms will officially enter into force in Spain and the rest of Europe on August 1 and will include a Spanish declaration on its application to Gibraltar.
The Official State Gazette (BOE) published last Friday the instrument of ratification of Protocol number 15 amending the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was signed in Rome on November 4, 1950, but the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided on April 26, 2013 to introduce a series of amendments to “ensure that the European Court of Human Rights continues to play its primary role in the protection of human rights in Europe.”
For that reason, Protocol number 15 amending the Convention was adopted in Strasbourg on June 24, 2013, and signed the same day by Spain. However, the Spanish representation at the Council of Europe deposited, on September 20, 2018, a declaration consigned to the instrument of ratification “in the event that this Protocol is ratified by the United Kingdom”.
In the declaration, Spain makes it clear that “Gibraltar is a non-self-governing territory for whose external relations the United Kingdom is responsible and which is subject to a process of decolonization in accordance with the relevant decisions and resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly.” Likewise, it continues, “the Gibraltar authorities have a local character and exercise exclusively internal powers which have their origin and basis in the distribution and attribution of powers made by the United Kingdom, in accordance with the provisions of its domestic legislation, in its capacity as the sovereign State on which the said Non-Self-Governing Territory depends”.
“The eventual participation of the Gibraltarian authorities in the application of the present Protocol will be understood to be carried out exclusively within the framework of the internal competences of Gibraltar” and, therefore, the application of this Protocol to the Rock “cannot be interpreted as recognition of any rights or situations relating to areas not covered by Article 10 of the Treaty of Utrecht, of 13 July 1713, signed by the Crowns of Spain and Great Britain”, concludes the Spanish statement.
The United Kingdom is among the fifty or so countries in which the Protocol will enter into force on January 1. The Spanish ratification was authorized by the Spanish Parliament and the consent of Spain to be bound by this Protocol and, therefore, the issuance of the instrument of ratification was signed by the King and countersigned by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, on September 3, 2018.
