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Deadline exceeded after deadline. First was the absolute deadline this summer. Then it was after the summer. It lasted and lasted, but the British and the EU failed to agree on new agreements that will apply from New Years, when the British leave the union.
In both October and November, it was said again that it was absolutely the deadline to reach an agreement that could be implemented. But then no. It was not until Christmas Eve itself that the parties were able to announce that the agreement is already in force.
Some formalities remain, but for all practical purposes the parties agree.
Fear of chaos
However, it is a British territory where people are still holding their breath, despite the Brexit deal.
For Gibraltar, where 96 per cent of those eligible to vote voted against Britain leaving the EU, Brexit talks between the EU and the UK have been excluded.
Spain managed to convince the EU that Gibraltar should be excluded, so that the Spanish are responsible for all talks with Gibraltar and London.
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On Thursday of last week, Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya said she feared a repeat of the huge queue of trucks that was seen recently in the English Channel.
– We do not have much time and the chaos we saw in the UK should remind us that we must continue to work to reach an agreement on Gibraltar. The Spanish want an agreement, the people of Gibraltar want one, now Britain must also want an agreement. There is a need for political will, González Laya said, according to the AP news agency.
Brexit queue at the border
Sovereignty cow
Gibraltar was ceded to Great Britain in 1713, as part of the Treaty of Utrecht, which contains a series of peace treaties in the wake of the War of the Spanish Succession.
However, Spain has never renounced its claim to sovereignty over “the Rock”, as Gibraltar is also referred to, and the seed of reluctance between the parties has been there throughout the negotiations.
These disagreements have yet to be put aside now, says the Spanish foreign minister.
“Neither party will renounce its sovereignty demands, but we must put it aside to reach an agreement that makes life easier for those who live on both sides of the border,” said González Laya.
More than 15,000 people live in Spain and work in Gibraltar. It is about 50 percent of the workforce in the small British colony, where a total of 34,000 people live.
If this alone does not underline how important it is for Gibraltar to reach an agreement that guarantees a smooth border crossing, it can be added that the small colony receives 10 million tourists a year. The sector represents up to 25 percent of the country’s economy.
Vonde remembers the Francoist border
So perhaps it is not surprising that Gibraltar’s Deputy Prime Minister Joseph Garcia remembers his own childhood with horror. In 1969, the Spanish dictator Franco closed the border between Spain and Gibraltar. Even the phone connections were broken and the border was not reopened for pedestrians until 1982 and for cars in 1985.
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– It had a terrible effect on everything. We cannot allow this to happen again, Garcia said in February this year, according to Reuters.
Boris Johnson has assured that the British government is working to find a solution that includes “securing the border flow, which is obviously something that local communities on both sides of the border want.”
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He wants the Schengen solution
The solution that has been outlined so far is neither new nor revolutionary, but it does give a slightly strange result.
According to El País, the solution will mean that Gibraltar for all practical purposes becomes a member of the Schengen, which we Norwegians know very well. It offers people from 26 European countries the opportunity to move freely between countries.
The parties will agree to guarantee the free movement of the border between Spain and Gibraltar, in exchange for converting the Gibraltar airport and port into the external border of the EU.
If the Schengen solution ends with a formalized agreement, it will give people in Gibraltar a freedom of movement that they have never had before, as the UK has never been a Schengen member.
It also gives the somewhat curious result that people arriving by plane from Great Britain to Gibraltar must show their passports upon arrival, while Spaniards and others arriving at the Spanish border avoid it.
There should be a few points of contention that need to be in place, including who will carry out passport control at the airport and at the port. Schengen members are responsible for preventing people from entering the Schengen area illegally.
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In this case, only Spain can carry out this control, since the United Kingdom is not a member of Schengen and Gibraltar is not a state. For the moment, the European border agency Frontex is likely to take over the task, as Gibraltar is very reluctant to allow the Spanish police to do this work on its territory.
Urgent
So far no agreement has been signed, but just before Christmas, Gibraltar’s Prime Minister Fabian Picardo said that “we are only a few sentences away from a historic agreement.”
But it begins to hurry, as Picardo himself pointed out this weekend.
“Days are getting longer, but time is getting shorter,” he wrote. On twitter.
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