Certain issues heat up as they get closer to elections. The issue of Gibraltar’s role in the post-Brexit era is one of them. The possibility that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) retains a supervisory role in the future application of community rules on the Rock has set off alarms among the most anti-European British conservative MPs. The Spanish government, with a decisive role in these negotiations, aims to close the new treaty on this territory between the UK and the EU before the June European elections. Downing Street seeks to avoid the discussion poisoning the months leading up to the general elections, scheduled for the next autumn. The Gibraltar government needs a clear framework that will take them out of the limbo that Brexit, which the majority of its population rejected, put them in.
During the most delicate moment, just two weeks after the Foreign Ministers of Spain and the UK, José Manuel Albares and David Cameron, politically committed in Brussels to promote an imminent solution, nerves have resurfaced among the hard-line members of the British Conservative Party. The Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo; the British Foreign Minister, David Cameron; the Vice President of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic; and the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares were involved in this delicate situation. This Wednesday, the British Secretary of State for Gibraltar, David Rutley, appeared before the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons. His purpose was to inform MPs about the current progress of the negotiations, but both he and Robbie Bullock, the director of the British negotiating team, ended up getting caught in the traps set by fiercely eurosceptic MPs like David Jones, who once headed the Department for Exiting the EU during the term of former Prime Minister Theresa May. The two representatives of Sunak’s government ended up admitting the obvious: Gibraltar’s courts will use the resolutions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as a reference or consultation in the future agreement when applying or interpreting community regulations, just like in Northern Ireland.
In 2020, it was agreed, pending a few loose ends still being negotiated, that Gibraltar would join Schengen, the European area of free movement that includes 26 countries (22 EU, plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, and Liechtenstein), so that the colony’s border will no longer be at the Fence but will be situated in its port and airport. In this way, those entering from Spanish territory to Gibraltar will not need a passport, but British citizens traveling to their colony will need one, since the UK is not part of Schengen. “I sincerely trust that the Government and the Foreign Minister are fully aware that any direct or indirect expansion of the ECJ’s jurisdiction in matters dealt with by this committee will be considered very serious,” warned committee chairman Bill Cash, one of the Conservative MPs who most zealously defends Brexit. “They have caused me considerable alarm,” added MP Jones to reinforce the tension. “We are talking about foreign border agents operating on British soil, and the potential ability to deny British citizens entry to that territory,” he said. “We are talking about what I see as a significant decrease in British sovereignty which the Government seems to be happy with, without any problems,” he added.
The Secretary of State tried to calm the concerns raised by the MPs by stating that “the UK would only reach an agreement with the EU on Gibraltar that satisfied the Government of that territory, protected its sovereignty, and fully safeguarded the operations and autonomy of British military installations on the Rock.”
