Eduardo González
The new UK Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, will meet this Wednesday with his Spanish counterpart, José Manuel Albares, to discuss, presumably, the recent signing and provisional implementation of the UK-EU Treaty on Gibraltar.
The meeting will take place at the Ministry headquarters in the Palacio de Viana, Madrid, and at the start of the meeting, both ministers will make brief statements, according to the announcement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Only photographers are expected to be present, and no press conference has been announced afterward.
Ed Miliband, appointed on July 20 by the new British Prime Minister, Labour’s Andy Burnham, led the Labour Party from September 25, 2010, until his resignation on May 8, 2015, following his defeat in the 2015 general election. He is the brother of David Miliband, who also served as Foreign Secretary between June 2007 and June 2010. He replaces Yvette Cooper, who has been appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
Separately, Miliband held a conversation on Tuesday with the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, in which they discussed how matters relating to Gibraltar will be handled going forward between the relevant ministers of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), according to the Gibraltarian government.
“The Chief Minister was also able to raise issues relevant to the implementation of the Treaty, ahead of the meeting that the British Foreign Secretary will hold tomorrow in Madrid with the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares,” he continued.
During the meeting, according to the same source, Miliband “was very clear in his commitment to the exclusively British sovereignty of Gibraltar.” “I am confident that the relationship with the United Kingdom will be secure as long as Ed remains at the FCDO, and I know it will be easy to work with him in the coming weeks and months,” Picardo stated.
On July 14, the Vice-President of the European Commission, Maroš Šefčovič, and the British Minister of State for Europe, North America and the UK Overseas Territories, Stephen Doughty, signed, in the presence of Fabian Picardo and José Manuel Albares, the Agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom on Gibraltar, which came into provisional application at 00:00 the following day. On July 15, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez presided over the demolition of the border fence in La Línea de la Concepción.
The Treaty, adopted on June 11, 2025, after almost four years of negotiations, with periods of progress and others of stagnation, provides for the removal of the fence, the last wall on the European continent, and establishes that there will be no passport controls between the two territories. Spain will assume responsibility for Schengen controls at the airport and port of Gibraltar, and Spanish authorities will have the final say on the issuance and renewal of residence permits.
Separately, the treaty contains a specific chapter on sovereignty which states that any supplementary agreement, any administrative agreement, or any other agreement related to this Agreement, and any measure, instrument, or conduct taken in application of or as a result of, or pursuant to, this Agreement, “shall be without prejudice to, and not otherwise affect, the respective legal positions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or the Kingdom of Spain with respect to sovereignty and jurisdiction, and shall not form the basis for any assertion or denial of sovereignty, including in judicial or other proceedings.”
After the signing, Albares declared that Spain’s sovereignty claims remain “absolutely as they were, but, moreover, absolutely safeguarded” and asserted that “Article 2 makes it very clear that Spain is not changing one iota of its sovereignty claim, that we continue to claim sovereignty, and that our position remains the same.” For his part, the UK representative at the signing, Stephen Doughty, stated that this “historic agreement (…) protects British sovereignty” and Picardo celebrated the adoption of this text “without compromising our British sovereignty and without weakening the constitutional guarantees that define Gibraltar.”