Picardo responds to the “charlatans” that the adopted Agreement was “the only possible one”

Eduardo González The Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, on Thursday invoked words from former British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to reject any possible shared sovereignty between Spain and the United Kingdom over the Rock following the signing of the Treaty with the EU. He also stated that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, is “invited” to visit Gibraltar “at any time” and criticized the “charlatans” who hope to “impose” an agreement without “consulting” the Gibraltarians. “The agreement we are about to sign was the only possible one,” declared Picardo during his speech at the New Economy Forum breakfast briefing in Madrid, one day after being received by Albares at the ministerial headquarters in the Palacio de Viana to discuss preparations for the implementation of the EU-UK Agreement. This coincided with the minister's visit to the Campo de Gibraltar region to discuss the same topic with mayors and social partners. “There are many charlatans, if you'll excuse the expression, and many frivolous players in unrealistic politics who claim that many other objectives were achievable, that they could be imposed on Gibraltar,” he continued, without mentioning anyone by name. “That's not true: this is a multi-party agreement, and we all had to agree to reach a consensus and sign it,” he asserted. “No one in their right mind can think in the 21st century that a reality could be imposed on Gibraltar without social consensus and without consulting us,” he added. In Picardo's view, there was no alternative to the Agreement “that was up to date with the 21st century.” “The nightmare of long, crowded queues, with cross-border workers standing around for hours on end, was not a solution,” he added. The Agreement, he cautioned, “is not going to be a magic wand that solves all the problems” but “it does prevent the burden that was coming our way.” “The Spanish are the most committed Europeans I know; you like the European Union, you believe, more than anyone, in the foundations and values of the European Union, and what this treaty does is extrapolate those European Union values and bring them to the relationship between Spain and Gibraltar, and in particular between Gibraltar and the Campo de Gibraltar region,” he added. Sovereignty Regarding the position of the People's Party, which maintains that Spain has lost a historic opportunity to recover the Rock after Brexit, the Chief Minister warned that the Treaty is about “how we are going to work together, not how we are going to resolve the issue of sovereignty.” “The Foreign Minister, whom I love to call a friend, has a position on the sovereignty of Gibraltar that I don't consider agreeable,” he stated. However, he recalled that this disagreement is reflected in Article 2 of the Treaty, which “contains the disagreement between the United Kingdom and Gibraltar, on the one hand, and Spain on the other, in addition to the European Union, which has no position on sovereignty issues.” It is “one article, Article 2 of the treaty: one page out of 1,083 pages in this treaty,” while the negotiators have focused “on the other 1,082 pages” because they have opted “for coexistence, for dialogue, for common sense, for people over conflictive politics,” and in this way “confrontation has finally been ruled out.” “The treaty is not only the endpoint of a negotiation, it is also the beginning of a path of cooperation, coordination, and coexistence; it is the beginning of a new and revitalized coexistence,” he affirmed. In any case, Picardo made it very clear that the new Agreement does not represent a step towards the shared sovereignty proposed at the time by José Manuel García-Margallo (PP), who was Minister of Foreign Affairs during the Brexit period. “I no longer like to talk about sovereignty,” because “I’m here to talk about coexistence,” Picardo asserted, who, to avoid the question, cited a political opponent of the stature of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990). “When I went to Brussels for the European Councils, she always said ‘no, no, no,’” Picardo recalled. Despite their significant ideological differences (he is a Labour member and she was very conservative), he admitted, “she was quite right in some of the things she said.” Invitation to Albares The meeting the previous day between Albares and Picardo was the first time in history that the Governments of Spain and Gibraltar held a bilateral ministerial meeting in Madrid, and in this regard, Picardo stated this Thursday that the Spanish minister is “more than welcome” to travel to Gibraltar “at any time.” “I hope we can confirm his arrival, and not only his, in Gibraltar at an opportune moment,” he affirmed. “If it were up to me, it would be today, if he wished, but I believe that today he is doing a very important job by presenting the agreement, also publicly, in the Campo de Gibraltar, as he has done on other occasions,” he added. “Yes, of course I have invited him to come to Gibraltar, but I have invited him to come to Gibraltar in a political and personal capacity, because José Manuel is a good friend and I believe we have done our job of defending what we had to defend, without giving anything away, but seeking an agreement for the good of the people we have the obligation to represent.” “I don’t have a single friend with whom I agree on everything, and I have many friends, and we really enjoy going out for tapas and beers or coffee and churros to talk about what unites us, not necessarily what divides us,” he added. “The important thing is that the Spanish Foreign Minister, or any other minister in the Spanish government who has a relevant issue to address,” can travel to Gibraltar, and that this “is a normal occurrence,” because “Spain is a country that believes in dialogue.” “How can you have dialogue with some, but not with others? I think that’s the discourse of the past, and the discourse of the future lies in full and constant dialogue,” he added. Approval of the Agreement Regarding the approval of the Agreement in the European Parliament, Picardo stated that “what’s delaying its signing is that it needs to be translated, and once translated, a legal and juridical analysis of the text must be carried out in each language.” “I believe the agreement will reach the European Parliament after the summer, and I think it will pass very smoothly after the European Parliament, if it so desires,” he added. Regarding the People's Party's request for the text to be submitted to the Spanish Parliament, the Chief Minister recalled that “the European Council has already determined, in a legal opinion last week or the week before, that it is not a mixed agreement, but rather an agreement under the exclusive competence of the European Union, so that matter is already lost.” Therefore, “whether or not it should be voted on in the Spanish Parliaments of the 27 member states, the European Council has already determined that it should not be voted on, as it is a matter of exclusive competence,” he insisted.

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