The Diplomat
The State Secretary for the EU, Fernando Sampedro, assured yesterday that the agreement being negotiated by the European Commission and the United Kingdom on Gibraltar provides for the introduction of indirect taxes on goods imported or manufactured in the Rock to guarantee “fair competition” to both sides of the fence.
Sampedro responded in the EU Joint Commission to a question posed by PP senator Gonzalo Robles, who warned that his party cannot give a “blank check” to the Government in this matter without first knowing the content of the agreement.
“We need to know the details and above all we need to have the peace of mind that this really does not serve to consolidate a historically unjust situation,” he said, denouncing that Gibraltar is a “tax haven” and demanding “comparable taxation” on both sides of the La Verja, reports Europa Press.
Sampedro acknowledged that one of the concerns is to guarantee that the planned removal of the Gate does not imply “distortions” in the European internal market, hence the New Year’s Eve Agreement sealed between Madrid and London on December 31, 2020, which serves as a basis In the negotiation, it already included “the application of indirect and special taxes, with special attention to the most sensitive merchandise and products” such as tobacco, alcohol and fuel.
The text that is now being negotiated, he explained, provides for the application in Gibraltar of indirect taxes “on goods that are imported or manufactured in the colony”, although he did not want to go into more details “out of caution and not to hinder the negotiation.” .
However, he insisted that the desire is to “achieve the smallest possible differential between the tax rates” applied in Gibraltar and the surrounding Spanish region. “We have the clear objective that our internal market and, most especially, trade in the Campo de Gibraltar is not harmed, so that illicit trafficking does not occur,” he assured.
For his part, Robles was against the rush to close an agreement and that this is “the objective in itself” and not its content. “That would be a huge mistake,” he said, arguing that one should “never be in a hurry on such important issues and one should not sacrifice the substance of the issue for the urgency of the moment.”
The PP senator admitted that the current circumstances, with the elections to the European Parliament from June 6 to 9 and the elections in the United Kingdom on July 4, may justify accelerating the negotiation but reiterated that it cannot be in exchange for “giving in issues that are not presentable”.
Likewise, he reiterated the complaint that the PP has been making that in the negotiation between the EU and the United Kingdom, in which Spain also participates on the European side, the chief minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, has been in the British delegation and has not There was no presence of either the Junta de Andalucía or Campo de Gibraltar. In addition, he demanded that the Government reveal what its “red lines” are in this negotiation.
Fernando Sampedro said that the Government continues “working together with the European Commission to achieve an agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom on Gibraltar that should bring confidence, legal security and stability to the lives and quality of life of the almost 300,000 Andalusians of the region of Campo de Gibraltar”.
The State Secretary pointed out that, apart from the two electoral events, “the contacts at a technical level continue their course”, and repeated that, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, said on multiple occasions, “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
