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The agreement in principle between Spain and Great Britain came at the last minute. This is to prevent the border between the British Overseas Territory and Spain from becoming a waterproof external border for the EU.
At the last minute, Spain and Great Britain reached an agreement in principle in the Gibraltar-Brexit dispute, according to which Gibraltar usually joins the Schengen area without border controls. This will prevent the border between Spain and Gibraltar at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula from becoming an impervious external border for the EU as of January 1, 2021, said Spain’s Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya, the Thursday in Madrid.
Instead, Gibraltar will now join Spain and the European Union more closely as a surprising consequence of Britain’s departure from the EU. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 96 percent of Gibraltar’s 33,000 residents voted to remain in the EU.
Spain and Great Britain had recently negotiated a Brexit regulation for Gibraltar under great time pressure. The British Overseas Territory is not part of the Christmas agreement between the EU and Great Britain, but the talks were bilateral between Madrid on the one hand and Great Britain and Gibraltar on the other. The agreement in principle now reached between Madrid and London must then be agreed between the EU and London, said González Laya.
Spain controls the external border
With the admission of Gibraltar to the Schengen area, the external border of the EU will be transferred to the international airport of the overseas territory. The EU border protection agency, Frontex, is supposed to monitor travelers there. According to González Laya, the carelessness is in Spain. This is a sore point for the people of Gibraltar, because Spain is contesting Britain’s sovereignty over Monkey Rock. However, Madrid had insisted on supervising the controls, because Spain is obliged to control the external border with the other Schengen states. Great Britain cannot because it does not belong to the Schengen area and neither can Gibraltar because it is not a state.
The chancellor warned that otherwise Spain’s border with Gibraltar would have become the EU’s external border earlier in the year. On a smaller scale, scenes similar to the truck jam in front of Dover in Britain threatened, the minister warned. González Laya assured that during a transitional period Spain will maintain the previous regulations on the border with Gibraltar.
A single border crossing
Every day 15,000 people from Spain cross the border into Gibraltar in the morning to go to work there and return at night. Until now, they only have to show their identity card and are told to come in. A special regulation allows everyone who has registered to continue doing so. However, in times without Corona, around seven million tourists are added each year. If everyone had to present a passport at the new EU external border that had to be sealed, the only transition would be desperately overloaded and workers could hardly get through.
