Albares confident that the Gibraltar agreement can be implemented starting July 15th

Eduardo González The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, assured Congress that the General State Administration is “working” to ensure that the agreement on Gibraltar’s future status within the European Union can begin to be implemented starting July 15th, “once both the Union and the United Kingdom complete the internal procedures for approving and signing the text.” “The historic agreement is now a reality. The last remaining element of the new relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom after Brexit represents a huge leap forward in terms of stability and prosperity for the 300,000 Andalusians in the Campo de Gibraltar region, and also a new stage in the relationship between Spain and the United Kingdom,” the minister stated this Thursday, April 9th, during his appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress to report on the agreement. “The Spanish General State Administration, with the invaluable collaboration of the La Línea City Council, is working towards the implementation of the agreement, which is expected to take effect on July 15, as decided on April 1 by all the Member States of the European Union in Brussels, once both the EU and the UK have completed their internal procedures for approving and signing the text,” announced Albares, referring to the recent approval by the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the EU Member States (COREPER) of the agreement texts and the decisions regarding its signing and provisional application. According to Albares, “the agreement means the disappearance of the fence, the last wall of continental Europe,” which will mean that, “for the first time, people and goods entering and leaving Gibraltar will be controlled by Spanish authorities.” “Schengen controls for people entering Gibraltar through the port and airport are carried out by the Spanish National Police, thus guaranteeing the integrity of the Schengen Area, while goods will be processed at the Spanish customs posts designated in the agreement,” he continued. Furthermore, according to the minister, “Spain’s responsibility to ensure the integrity of the Schengen acquis and the Customs Union also extends to base personnel and goods entering or leaving it, which must therefore be identified to the Spanish authorities.” “This is the first time in history that Spain will have this information about what enters and leaves the base,” he asserted. The text, he continued, “also assigns to the Spanish authorities the competence and responsibility to carry out control functions at the external Schengen borders, that is, border inspections at the border crossings established at the airport and port, and border surveillance in other areas.” In this regard, he specified, “Spain will have full powers to apply European regulations at this new external border of the Union.” Furthermore, according to Albares, the treaty “establishes a specific evaluation mechanism that will be carried out four years after the agreement's implementation begins and will allow for its termination if deemed necessary. The European Union will be obliged to initiate the procedure to restrict the agreement if Spain requests it as a result of this evaluation.” “In addition, a bilateral mechanism is created that will, for the first time, require the parties to consult each other on the cross-border environmental impact of any project, which specifically includes landfills and dumping,” he added. Likewise, “for the first time, Spain will also jointly monitor compliance with the regulations applicable to the airport located on the Isthmus,” he affirmed. According to Albares, “one of Spain's main priorities throughout the negotiations has been to guarantee the rights of cross-border workers, which are fully guaranteed.” “The agreement establishes a high level of protection for cross-border workers and includes all the necessary social security provisions. It also guarantees that European Union citizens legally residing in Spain, as well as their family members, have the right to work in Gibraltar without discrimination and under equal employment and working conditions,” he added. Furthermore, Albares noted that “Article 2 of the agreement includes an explicit and crystal-clear clause that safeguards our position regarding sovereignty and jurisdiction.” “There is absolutely no concession of sovereignty; quite the contrary,” he insisted. Carlos Floriano During his turn to speak, the PP spokesperson on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Carlos Floriano, used irony to state that, “indeed, this is a historic agreement, because we have to go back centuries to find a missed opportunity, like the one Brexit gave us, to move forward in recovering the colony that the United Kingdom maintains in our country.” “After Brexit, the Council of the European Union made it clear that no agreement on Gibraltar could go ahead without Spain’s consent,” he recalled. “It was an unprecedented position of strength, an opportune moment to put issues such as sovereignty on the table, on which we have in our favor not only the latest position of the European Union, but also UN resolutions that consider Gibraltar a non-self-governing territory subject to decolonization in accordance with the principle of territorial integrity, whose future will have to be negotiated between the United Kingdom and Spain,” he continued. Therefore, according to Floriano, the Government “has thrown away the best opportunity Spain has had to take steps” in favor of sovereignty. “If they haven’t claimed sovereignty or a period of co-sovereignty, then what has the government done? Exactly the opposite. They’ve taken steps backward, decided to exclude themselves, dilute the negotiations within the framework of an agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom, and relinquish the power they once held,” he denounced. “It’s not that they lost a difficult negotiation; it’s simply that they didn’t want to fight a battle we could have fought,” Floriano reproached Albares. “They surrendered without asking for anything in return, and that says very little about a negotiator: they’ve relinquished our position in the Sahara, they’ve relinquished our position in Gibraltar,” and from now on, “it will be done when the European Union deems it appropriate; we no longer have the power we once had,” he lamented. “It’s not that they lost a difficult negotiation; it’s simply that they didn’t want to fight a battle we could have fought,” he added. “They have succeeded in preventing Spain from moving towards sovereignty, in having a Spanish government de facto recognize British sovereignty over territories claimed by Spain, in allowing Gibraltarians to improve their position within the European Union even though the United Kingdom has left it, and in denying Spanish members of parliament the possibility of voting on this matter,” he continued. “British members of Parliament will be able to vote, but we will not, and it won't be because the European Union, the Commission, or the Council have prevented it, but because the Spanish government has preferred that we, the Spanish members of parliament, not express our opinion on this matter, as we are entitled to do under Article 94 of the Constitution,” he denounced.

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