Spain and the United Kingdom are resuming negotiations on Gibraltar after the change of government in London. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares met his counterpart David Lammy on Monday to discuss the issue, which is the main outstanding issue in EU-UK relations since Brexit. The European Commission will hold a ministerial meeting again on Thursday.
The deal has met with resistance, even though both sides have long claimed it is close. The intention was to close it before the European elections in June so that the same team could handle the entire Brexit negotiation process, but that has not been possible. The UK’s snap elections have also delayed the process.
Brussels will once again be the venue for a new meeting after the deal came very close in May at a meeting in which governments highlighted “significant progress” and even talked about a political agreement on some of the most relevant issues. However, the details have yet to be finalised. At the last meeting, the outstanding issues of mobility, goods and the airport were discussed, which have been the main obstacles to negotiating Gibraltar’s status after Brexit.
The aim of the negotiations is to eliminate controls on people and goods at physical borders, where mobility is constant, and at the same time to ensure the security of the market and the European area of free movement of people. “It takes two to tango,” Albares said after the last meeting with David Cameron, then head of British diplomacy. The ball therefore remained in London’s court.
“According to Executive Vice-President Maros Sefcovic, negotiations between Spain and the European Commission with the United Kingdom on Gibraltar will resume at ministerial level next Thursday in Brussels,” diplomatic sources point out.
The main impasses in these years of negotiations concern Peñón airport, for which Spain has demanded a joint use agreement, as well as the role of Frontex agents and Spanish security forces and bodies at the airport’s border for travellers from third countries, and the equal treatment of retired cross-border workers, by extending the British Community Care benefits (which amount to around €465 more) to this group. Issues related to the fence, which in practice represents an external border of the EU, and customs control have also been at the centre of discussions in recent years.
