The European Union and the United Kingdom have reached on Wednesday an agreement with which to put an end to the five years of limbo in which Gibraltar was after the British divorce of the block and that will allow suppressing the gate between Spain and the Peñón.
“The agreement in relation to Gibraltar is already a reality. A historical agreement,” announced the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, in an X message.
The agreement comes after the meeting held by the Commissioner of Commerce and European Negotiator with the United Kingdom, Maros Sefcovic, would gather by surprise in Brussels to the Spanish and British Foreign Ministers, José Manuel Albares and David Lammy, respectively, and to the main minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo.
Although the meeting at Cuatro was initially scheduled to start at 1:45 p.m., Lammy and Picardo have not reached the headquarters of the European Commission until about 4:00 p.m. from the British Embassy, located in the same European neighborhood. Albares, meanwhile, was gathered with SEFCOVIC from hours before.
After the summit between the EU and the United Kingdom on May 19 in London, Sefcovic called the parties to take advantage of the “impulse” given by the leaders to normalize the framework of relations in key matters such as defense or migration to try to reach an agreement after almost four years of negotiation from Brexit.
The ongoing negotiation is based on the so -called New Year’s Eve agreement, closed by Spain and the United Kingdom on December 31, 2020, which provides, among other things, the suppression of the fence and the de facto entrance of the rock in the Schengen space.
For this, the border controls must be transferred to the port and the airport and before the refusal of Gibraltar of a Spanish police face -to -face it is contemplated that it is the European Border Agency (Frontex) who performs them during an initial period.
In one more step towards the agreement, precisely this Wednesday the community executive announced that it took Gibraltar from the blacklist of the European Union of countries with “high risk” of capital laundering and terrorist financing.
