The Diplomat
The Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, has warned that negotiations between the UK and the EU regarding the Rock could “break down” if “Spain plays hardball at the border”. For his part, the Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, warned yesterday before the UN that the final agreement between London and Brussels must respect “the legal position” of Spain “with respect to sovereignty”.
“If Spain is trying to play hardball at the border in the final stages of negotiations over a treaty, it could break the entire process, because Gibraltar will not consider it to be acting in good faith,” he told Radio Gibraltar this past Thursday.
Specifically, Picardo was referring to recent information on the alleged tightening, by the Spanish authorities, of controls at the border. According to the radio station, in recent weeks there have been “excessive passport scannings” and there have even been “more aggressive and heavy-handed actions, such as car confiscations”. In this regard, the Chief Minister assured during the interview that he preferred to believe that these “incidents at the border” had been by “accident and not by design”, since “if they are by design, they will find Gibraltarians believing they have no friends on the other side of the border”.
For his part, Pedro Sánchez expressed, during his speech at the General Debate of the 77th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations -in the early hours of Thursday to Friday, Spanish time-, his desire to reach, “as soon as possible”, an “agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom in relation to Gibraltar” that allows “laying the foundations for a future relationship of this territory with the European Union”.
“This agreement must be fully respectful of the United Nations doctrine on that territory, with which Spain is fully aligned,” he continued. “It must also be respectful of my country’s legal position with respect to sovereignty and jurisdiction in relation to it,” he warned. “We wish, in any case, to work for the development of a prosperous, social and economic area that encompasses the entire area of Gibraltar, and also of the Campo de Gibraltar,” he concluded.
