The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, will travel to London next Monday to meet with his British counterpart, David Lammy, with the agreement on Gibraltar that the United Kingdom and the EU are finalising still on the table, according to the Foreign Ministry. Albares already had the opportunity to speak with Lammy on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington but this will be the first proper bilateral meeting between the two, since the new Labour government came to power last July. After that meeting, the minister already said that the will of both governments was that negotiations could be resumed as soon as possible and at the point where they had been left off as a result of the political standstill caused by the early elections, since contacts have continued at a technical level. Brussels, on behalf of the Twenty-Seven, and London have been negotiating for more than two years the agreement that will govern Gibraltar’s relationship with the EU after Brexit, but they are doing so on the basis of the so-called New Year’s Eve Agreement reached by the Spanish and British governments on December 31, 2020. On the table, as Albares has repeated on numerous occasions, is a proposal for a “balanced” agreement put forward by Madrid and Brussels. Thus, the minister has put the weight on London, in whose “court” he has placed the ball. In turn, the new British Labour Government has expressed its willingness to reach an agreement, but has made it clear that it will not do anything that the Gibraltarian Government does not agree with. The ultimate goal is the creation of an area of shared prosperity between the Rock and the Campo de Gibraltar, for which the removal of the Fence is planned. In exchange, access controls to the Schengen area should be moved to the port and airport of Gibraltar, where at first there would be a presence of agents from Frontex, the European border agency. This is one of the most thorny points, along with the use of the airport and the military base on the Rock. PICARDO LOWERS EXPECTATIONS The Chief Minister of the Rock, Fabian Picardo, has already tried to lower expectations regarding the meeting between Albares and Lammy in London, assuring that Gibraltar was not the main issue, but rather bilateral relations. In an interview after the meeting he himself held in London with Lammy, Picardo acknowledged that the negotiation of the agreement is “a roller coaster”. “There are things in which we are progressing well and issues that are becoming more difficult as the technical aspects of them become more apparent at the negotiating table,” he explained. According to Picardo, the point is to reach an agreement in which everyone wins: Gibraltar, the United Kingdom, Spain and the EU. And that means respecting everyone’s “red lines”, which “is not easy” but “is not impossible either”. However, if the meeting on Monday between Albares and his British counterpart is productive, it could lead to a new meeting in Brussels. The European capital hosted a second meeting on May 16 between Albares and the then British Foreign Minister, David Cameron, together with the vice president of the Commission in charge of the matter, Maros Sefcovic, in which Picardo was also present, to try to close the agreement. Then, after six hours of meeting, it was reported that there had been “important progress and additional areas of agreement” and the parties noted that the agreement was “getting closer” and agreed to meet again. However, the decision of the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to bring forward the elections to July 4 put the negotiation on hold. TIME IS PRESSING Now, time is also pressing, given that on the one hand, the current European Commission, which is negotiating on behalf of the EU, has an expiry date – November or December at the latest – while on 10 November the new Entry/Exit System (EES) for the Schengen area and the new European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) will come into force. The Gibraltarian government already warned its citizens of this contingency last July, under which controls will be re-established at the Verja, making it mandatory to scan the passport and provide biometric data before crossing, although once in this system it will no longer be necessary to repeat the process, but there will be facial recognition systems to speed it up.
