The agreement between Spain and the United Kingdom on Gibraltar is "very close", assured yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, after meeting in Brussels with his new British counterpart, an old acquaintance actually former Prime Minister David Cameron, back in the Community capital to take part in a NATO meeting. "There has been progress", he emphasized.
The Spanish delegation did not miss the paradox that the man who called the referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union thinking he could win it, the proponent of Brexit, is now in charge of closing the last big bang pending his country's decision to leave the club. The Spanish Government claims that the only thing missing is "political will" to be able to close the agreement and sees in the availability of Cameron, who spoke on the phone with Albares on Monday and they agreed to meet the next day in Brussels, a good omen . "There has been no quarrel, no dispute", the Spanish minister assured the press after the meeting, which the British Executive had not reported on last night.
Spain and the United Kingdom closed on New Year's Eve 2020 a pact in extremis to avoid border controls that included basic concepts to develop the new framework of relations, but since then the agreement has been impossible Albares celebrated that, for the moment, the meeting has allowed the reactivation of bilateral negotiations, which had been paralyzed for several months. Both governments have given instructions to the respective negotiating teams to look for the appropriate "legal formulas" to be able to shape the global agreement proposed by Spain as an alternative to the application of Brexit on the Rock. In other words, a grid that would severely damage the economy of the entire region. For Albares, the document presented by Spain is "the best way to consolidate the current zone of shared prosperity".
One of the issues addressed by Albares and Cameron was the common use of Gibraltar airport, a place where the concept of sovereignty comes into play in a very practical way. This part of the Spanish proposal continues to raise problems in London, which this summer called it "unacceptable" that Spain wanted to apply its own rules and standards. However, the modalities of border control per se are no longer the subject of discussion, according to official sources. "Now we need to let the technical teams work", but "what David Cameron has told me is the same desire I have to reach an agreement", assured Albares.
The alternative to a bilateral agreement between Spain and the United Kingdom, which will later be endorsed by the European Commission, would be the pure and hard application of Brexit to Penyal, a change that would leave it in a "much worse" situation, says Madrid . Although after so many delays and obstacles (it has been almost a year since Madrid sent its proposed agreement to London) the Spanish Government does not consider a specific deadline for reaching an agreement, the holding of elections in June 2024 to the European Parliament and the consequent renewal of the Community Executive presents a natural time horizon.
"We have been talking about the proposal that Spain has put on the table for long enough. The agreement should not be extended any further. The current situation is transitory, it is meant to be. The normal situation should be the new agreement or, if not, the application of European legislation", he stressed.
