The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will travel to London next Monday to meet with the new head of the Foreign Office, the Labour Party’s David Lamy. It will be the first working meeting between the two, although Albares and Lammy had already had a first meeting in Washington on July 7, on the sidelines of the NATO summit, just 48 hours after the latter took office, and both agreed then to “work from now on” to improve bilateral relations and “reach an agreement regarding Gibraltar,” according to the Spanish minister.
The main objective of the meeting is to resume negotiations on the treaty that should regulate Gibraltar’s relations with the European Union after the Brexitwhich were put on hold after the British elections were called on 4 July, although the two foreign ministers will also discuss other aspects of the bilateral agenda, according to diplomatic sources. The same sources ruled out the possibility of reaching a final agreement at Monday’s meeting, although the respective technical teams have not stopped working and exchanging documents in recent months, and they called for a future three-way meeting with Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, like those held in April and May with the then British minister, the Labour Party member David Cameron, since the final agreement must be signed by the United Kingdom and the EU.
The most thorny point in the negotiations is Madrid’s demand that Spanish agents who are going to control passengers arriving in Gibraltar be able to be armed and in uniform, and to move freely around the entire border perimeter. The British side rejects the idea that they should be armed, arguing that by tradition their police do not carry weapons, while the Chief Minister of the Rock, Fabian Picardo, does not want to hear about the possibility of Spanish uniforms being seen inside the colony. “There will be no Spanish boots on the ground,” he said. For its part, Spain argues that a specific protocol cannot be designed for Gibraltar and that if Gibraltarians want to join the European border-free area they must accept the Schengen procedures.
In an interview published by EL PAÍS last Monday, Albares acknowledged that “the negotiation is at an irreversible point in which either we finalize the agreement or the British side indicates that it does not want it. But I insist: what I have seen in Lammy is that there is a will to reach it.” On November 10, the new system of control of entries and exits from the Schengen area comes into force, which for the first time will be applied in the Border, as corresponds to the territory of a third State, leaving the Rock no longer in the legal limbo in which it has been since the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU. “All the more reason,” warned Albares, “to have that agreement.” [sobre Gibraltar] as soon as possible”.
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