New high-level meeting to try to seal Gibraltar deal. The Foreign Ministers of Spain and the United Kingdom respectively, José Manuel Albares and David Cameron, will meet again in Brussels with the Vice President of the European Commission, Maroš Šefčovič, to discuss the details of the new relationship with the Rock after the Outline Brexit. as reported by diplomatic sources.
The meeting comes a month after the last meeting in which they noted “significant progress” in negotiations and managed to reach “general political lines” on Gibraltar's new status. The intention of all parties is to complete the agreement before the European elections so that the Brexit issues are dealt with with the current community administration, which is the one that negotiated the whole package after Britain's decision to leave the EU .
The British colony, whose sovereignty Spain has claimed since 1713, was left out of the agreements on the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union (EU), which came into force on December 31, 2020, and it was up to governments to agree on relations in the new phase with the aim of abolishing controls on people and goods at the physical border, where mobility is constant, while ensuring the security of the market and the EU area of free movement of people .
The main impasses during these years of negotiations concerned Peñón airport, for which Spain demanded a joint-use agreement, as well as the role of Frontex agents and the Spanish security forces and corps at the border of that airport and equal treatment of retired cross-border workers, extending British Community Care benefits (which amount to around €465 more) to this group. The issues also related to the fence, which in practice represents an external border of the EU.
This Thursday will be the second meeting in this format that has taken place in the entire time the parties have been negotiating, indicating the closeness of the agreement.