UK threatens non-negotiated exit for Gibraltar

Gibraltar airport runway, June 24.JON NAZCA / Reuters

It starts to be a repeating pattern. The Government of Boris Johnson, desperate at the time to close Brexit with the EU at all costs, signed agreements that are now not quite convincing. And he threatens to breach his part if they are not renegotiated. It has done so with the Northern Ireland Protocol. This Wednesday he did it again with Gibraltar. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for Europe and the Americas, Wendy Morton, has assured the deputies of the European Scrutiny Commission that the United Kingdom is prepared to address, together with Gibraltar, a

of their situation, in the event that the EU does not lower the claims imposed in its negotiating mandate of July 20. “We are already working, together with the Government of Gibraltar, on a possible Non-Negotiated Result, in the event that we reach the conclusion that this is the path we must take. We have very robust plans and we are very well prepared for any eventuality, including a no-deal situation [regarding Gibraltar], ”said Morton.

Members of the European Scrutiny Commission have a responsibility to monitor developments in the time of Brexit, and how new EU legislation may affect UK interests. None of them seemed, from the tone of their questions, to have a clear notion about the complexity of the Gibraltar negotiation, and the delicate interests (in terms of sovereignty, and in economic, human and practical matters) from which they have acted ago. years the Governments of the United Kingdom and Spain. They have limited themselves to expressing their surprise, more than a year later, by the fact that Gibraltar stood apart from the Brexit negotiation, and required a specific treaty between the EU and the United Kingdom. And, above all, they have been just as irritated at the idea that it could be the Spanish police,as suggested by the draft mandate of the European Commission (EC), which controls the external borders of the Rock.

London and Madrid reached on December 31, 2020, a few hours before New Year's Eve, a "principle of agreement" (Morton calls it a "political framework agreement") by which the physical fence that separates Gibraltar from the Line of Conception ( Cádiz) would cease to exist in six months. To prevent the Rock, dragged by Brexit, from becoming an external border of the EU, the territory would join Schengen, the European area of ​​free movement that integrates 26 countries (22 from the EU plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein). The border controls would no longer be at the gate, but at the port and airport of Gibraltar. A four-year implementation period was then agreed, in which these controls would be assumed by Frontex (the European border agency).But Spain would be responsible for the Schengen rules being met on the Rock. European agents should be accountable to the Spanish authorities, who would have the last word to allow a person to enter or issue a short-term visa (90 days).

This framework agreement was the basis on which the United Kingdom and the EU would begin to negotiate a new treaty on Gibraltar, on which the Spanish Government would have the last word.

The text, which the Spanish Executive noted as a triumph, was hastily signed by Downing Street.

Johnson wanted his Brexit at all costs, before advancing an election in which the Conservatives won a landslide victory.

The time is now another.

Johnson no longer enjoys bomb-proof popularity.

Next week celebrates the party's annual congress, always a delicate conclave, and the

Gibraltar is very powerful in the Westminster Parliament. When the EC's negotiating mandate was announced on 20 July, the then British Foreign Minister, Dominic Raab, was enraged, and assured that the text “was intended to undermine the sovereignty of the United Kingdom over Gibraltar, and cannot constitute a basis for negotiations ”. Two days later, the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, met with Raab in London and warmed up the situation: the negotiating mandate, he assured his host, was only "a starting point" on which to begin negotiate, and not an immovable position.

The EC text, however, made no mention of Frontex, and was particularly punctilious and detailed when defining the competence of the Government of Spain over Gibraltar. "We believe that it clashes head-on with the framework agreement, undermines UK sovereignty over Gibraltar and cannot be the basis for a future treaty," Morton said. “It ignores the fundamental role attributed to Frontex and proposes that Spanish agents carry out the controls; grants Spain the power to grant visas or asylum, and as well as police powers in the territory of Gibraltar ”, said the Secretary of State, whose general conclusion was that the mandate was completely disproportionate to the scarce exchange of goods and services between Gibraltar and the EU.

The chairman of the commission, Bill Cash, a veteran eurosceptic with the accent and shapes of the characters from the

series

, has insisted on asking Morton if relations between the United Kingdom and Spain with respect to Gibraltar were still governed by the Treaty. from Utrecht in 1713. "I am afraid you have caught me a little rusty in matters of history, President," Morton replied.