MADRID – The recent Brexit trade deal has brought relief in Britain and the European Union, but some issues have been left on the table – including what to do with Gibraltar, the British territory in the far south of Spain whose sovereignty has long been disputed by Madrid.
On Thursday, Spanish Chancellor Arancha González Laya announced a last-minute deal with negotiators in Britain and Gibraltar that avoids the possibility of travelers and goods being trapped at the border as of Friday.
The draft agreement will allow travel without a passport between Gibraltar and Spain. As part of the agreement, a European agency will monitor sea and air arrivals in Gibraltar. People arriving from Britain will need to go through passport control, as they do now.
“We understand the need to manage our interdependence,” said González Laya at a news conference. Although she insisted that “sovereignty is something inalienable for both sides”, she described the agreement as “a solid basis for the future relationship between Spain and the United Kingdom”.
Spain pressed for the negotiations on Gibraltar to be separated from the main Brexit negotiations between Britain and the European Union.
Known as the Rocha because of the dominant characteristic of its 2.6 square mile territory, Gibraltar has long surpassed its weight in military and economic importance, as a gateway to the Mediterranean, but also a financial center that significantly applies corporate taxation lower than Britain.
Given its geographic isolation, Gibraltar residents and officials feared the consequences of Brexit before the 2016 referendum, in which 96% of Gibraltar voters sought to remain in the European Union, but the British voted to leave.
Negotiators in Madrid, London and Gibraltar – working by videoconference – have spent the past few weeks struggling to meet the January 1 deadline for an agreement that would ensure the smooth movement of goods and people inside and outside Gibraltar, even with Britain. no longer part of the European Union.
Issues such as the mutual recognition of work permits and qualifications were resolved relatively easily, but the difficult points were what the Gibraltar border meant and who should police it.
Fearing border controls that could leave it isolated and economically damaged, Gibraltar wanted free access to control on the Spanish continent, similar to what exists among European countries that are part of the Schengen area, in which traveler’s checks were only reintroduced in emergencies such as the coronavirus pandemic.
There are now limited border controls in Gibraltar, because Britain was never part of the Schengen agreement. After Brexit, Spain wanted to ensure that the territory did not become a check-free entry point for people traveling to the Spanish mainland.
Ms. González Laya said it could take about six months for Thursday’s agreement to be formalized in a new treaty between the European Union and Britain on Gibraltar, but she promised that Spain “will keep traffic as fast as possible. possible fluid “across the border of the territory in the meantime.
“We believe that we can now restart our relationship with Spain and put it in a more positive light,” said Fabian Picardo, the leader of Gibraltar, at a separate news conference after the deal was closed. “We will avoid the worst effects of a rigid Brexit.”
Negotiations slowed down because Spain wanted to take control of the border, but Gibraltar proposed that this be done by Frontex, a European Union agency that monitors the borders of countries in the Schengen zone.
According to the pledge announced on Thursday, “Schengen will be applied to Gibraltar, with Spain as a member responsible for Schengen control”, in collaboration with Frontex over the next four years, said González Laya. Frontex officers will control passengers at the port and airport of Gibraltar.
Authorities in Brussels were not involved in Gibraltar’s latest negotiations, while Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government insisted that a new border agreement should not have an impact on British sovereignty and the free flow between Britain. Brittany and Gibraltar.
The protracted negotiations on Gibraltar have exasperated those who have to cross the border daily, with companies transporting goods across the border already suffering from the effects of the pandemic.
“This is part of the eternal dispute for Gibraltar’s sovereignty, but negotiators should really have been able to resolve this earlier and not compel us to end the year in a situation of total border uncertainty, when we already have to face a worsening rate coronavirus in Gibraltar, ”said Jesús Moya, a Spanish employee of a food distribution company in Gibraltar, who travels daily from his home in Spain. “Having a normal trade flow is essential, not only for Gibraltar, but also for Spain.”
About 2,000 of Gibraltar’s nearly 34,000 residents are now isolating themselves because of the coronavirus, and authorities decided before Christmas to close the border with Britain, to stem the spread of a new, apparently more contagious variant of the virus.
Given its geographical isolation in the extreme south of Spain, Gibraltar residents and officials feared the consequences of Brexit before the 2016 referendum, which was passed by a general majority of Britons, but rejected by 96 percent of voters in Gibraltar.
Britain has taken care of Gibraltar’s defense and international relations since it secured control of the territory in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. The Government of Gibraltar has significant autonomy over trade and tax issues, which has helped it become a European center financial services and online games.
In 1969, under General Francisco Franco, Spain closed the border with Gibraltar, leaving the territory dependent on supplies and financing from Great Britain. Even though it has not barricaded the border in recent years, Spain has occasionally created significant problems for Gibraltar by imposing stricter customs controls, leaving people and vehicles waiting hours to cross. In the past decade, Britain and Spain have also fought over access to waters off Gibraltar.
But any Spanish tightening of controls on the land border of Gibraltar also hurts some 10,000 workers like Moya, who move there daily, mainly from nearby cities that form an economically depressed area known as Campo de Gibraltar.
“We are meeting the aspirations of our citizens,” said Ms. González Laya. The deal would allow residents of neighboring Spanish cities to “breathe easy”, she added, avoiding a situation in which Gibraltar residents risk facing “the only difficult Brexit frontier” in Europe, although they voted overwhelmingly to stay in the bloc .