The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, asked yesterday in Brussels the Vice President of the Commission, Maros Sefcovic, to “increase the pace of meetings with the United Kingdom” on the future of Gibraltar so that progress can be made in the “global Spanish proposal” on the “fit” between Gibraltar and the Campo de Gibraltar.
Albares made these statements to the press during a new round of contacts in the EU capital to prepare the Spanish Presidency of the EU, which will take place in the second half of 2023. The first meetings began at the end of September, when he met in Brussels with the European Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, and the European Commissioner for Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis, and received in Madrid the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders.
Yesterday began with a meeting with the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, with whom the Minister discussed the letter he recently sent her on “the use of co-official languages (Galician, Catalan and Basque) in the plenary sessions of the European Parliament”. “I have asked her to put it into practice as soon as possible” and she was “receptive”, but she also told him that “there are technical difficulties” related to “the space for the translators’ booths”, he explained. In any case, he warned, “it is not a decision of Spain” and neither is it “exclusively of the president”, but corresponds to “the Bureau of the European Parliament”.
Subsequently, Albares met with the Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Interinstitutional Relations of the EU, Maros Sefcovic, to whom, in his capacity as head of the European negotiating team for the agreement on Gibraltar after the Brexit, he exposed the “global Spanish proposal for the relationship between Gibraltar and Campo de Gibraltar and create that area of shared prosperity.”
Therefore, although the negotiations “are progressing at a good pace”, Albares asked Sefcovic to “increase the pace of meetings with the United Kingdom” so that this “global proposal” can be specified because, “in the end, it is also an agreement between the Commission and the United Kingdom that will shape that fit”. “There is a global proposal that I have conveyed to him and that the Commission has to make its own and give content to the agreement,” he insisted.
“What I perceive from my meetings both with my British counterpart and in the negotiating teams on the part of the United Kingdom and Spain is also positive”, but “to dance a tango it takes two and, although we have the best will and there is a global proposal in this regard, it is necessary that the United Kingdom accepts it”, because “until everything is agreed, nothing is really agreed”.
Albares’ day in Brussels concluded with a meeting with the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, with whom he discussed, among other issues, European strategic autonomy, “a priority issue during our Presidency”, as the minister explained through his official Twitter account.
