BRUSSELS\/GIBRALTAR, July 14 (Reuters) – Britain and the European Union formally signed a treaty on the status of Gibraltar on Tuesday, following an agreement \u200cstruck last year aimed at easing border crossings and ending years of \u200cpolitical uncertainty over the British overseas territory.<\/p>\n
The treaty was signed in Brussels by European Trade Commissioner \u200bMaros Sefcovic, British Minister of State for Europe Stephen Doughty, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares and Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo.<\/p>\n
Gibraltar residents can cross over to Spain using residence cards without needing to have their passports stamped, while Spanish citizens can \u200ccross using a government ID \u2060card. The deal is designed to facilitate the movement of people and goods and avoid lengthy delays for the roughly 15,000 \u2060workers who cross the border each day.<\/p>\n
Albares said the deal opened a new chapter for Gibraltar, Spain, Britain and the European Union. He said it would benefit the 300,000 \u200bresidents of \u200bthe Campo de Gibraltar region by improving \u200bconnectivity, encouraging investment and strengthening \u200ccross-border cooperation, while replacing centuries of mistrust with a shared future built on coexistence and prosperity.<\/p>\n
Britain won Gibraltar \u2014 a strategically important enclave at the southern tip of Spain \u2014 in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of Spanish Succession.<\/p>\n
Those arriving at Gibraltar airport will show their passports to both Gibraltar and Spanish \u200cborder officers, and Britain wants a system similar \u200bto French police operating at London’s St Pancras \u200brailway station for the Eurostar service.<\/p>\n
Residents \u200bwelcomed the dismantling of border controls.<\/p>\n
“It is good for Spaniards \u200cand good for us. It’s fantastic,” \u200bGibraltar resident Elisabeth Tanino \u200btold Reuters.<\/p>\n
Gibraltarian Lidia Mifsud added that Gibraltar and the nearby Spanish town of La Linea had long enjoyed close ties and that the removal of \u200bborder checks would make \u200cdaily life easier for workers and residents on both sides.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sudip \u200bKar-Gupta; additional reporting by Jaime Lopez in Gibraltar and Emma Pinedo in \u200bMadrid;Editing by Phil Blenkinsop and Sharon Singleton)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS\/GIBRALTAR, July 14 (Reuters) – Britain and the European Union formally signed a treaty on the status of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[36657,13,9593,9594,1469,9592,36655,36656,36658],"class_list":["post-82929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-border-crossings","tag-britain","tag-british-overseas-territory","tag-campo-de-gibraltar","tag-european-union","tag-gibraltar","tag-gibraltar-airport","tag-minister-jose-manuel-albares","tag-stephen-doughty"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116919478759733805","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}