Spain will be able to veto the entry of British travellers to Gibraltar and refuse to grant residency permits on security grounds under a post-Brexit treaty.
The agreement, comprising 336 articles and 46 annexes in English, is due to be published on Thursday, ending almost a decade of limbo for the British Overseas Territory since the referendum result.
The Spanish authorities will be granted the right to block the entry of travellers from outside the EU — including Britons — deemed to pose a risk to security, public health or international relations, El País reported. The treaty also provides for the demolition of the fence that has separated the British colony from Spain for more than a century.
The details of the treaty, based on an agreement struck in June last year, still need to be ratified by the Gibraltar and UK parliaments. Giving Spain power over entry and residency checks is likely to be seen by British conservatives as an erosion of sovereignty.
Spain will not put the agreement before the parliament in Madrid, leaving it to be ratified by the European parliament in Brussels. If the treaty is not ratified before the April 10 deadline — when the land border is set to open — the agreement may be implemented on a provisional basis.
Further details of the agreement will describe how contentious sticking points will be addressed, such as how the airport and the border posts are managed between Spain and the UK, whether Spanish police officers on the territory are armed and what taxes apply on goods entering Gibraltar.
Gibraltar airport in 2020
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Negotiations previously faltered over issues such as the sovereignty of Gibraltar’s airport, which serves as an RAF base.
Under the treaty, Spanish and British officials will make checks at Gibraltar’s airport and port, meaning there will effectively be no land border separating the two sides.
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“The civilian air terminal will be run by a company jointly 50/50 by the Spanish and Gibraltar governments,” a source close to the negotiations said.
In addition, Gibraltar will end its VAT-free regime, a key demand of Madrid, which has long complained that lower taxes on the territory distorted the Spanish economy and encouraged contraband trade in some products, like cigarettes. Instead there will be a new levy, a higher rate of import duty called a “transaction tax”.
The status of Gibraltar — which has been under UK rule since the 18th century — and how to police the border with Spain have been points of disagreement since Britain voted in 2016 to leave the EU.
Brexit left Gibraltar, which has a land border with Spain, outside the European Union’s customs union and without guaranteed free movement of people. The deal aims to prevent a hard border emerging under new EU rules.
The treaty effectively makes Gibraltar part of the EU’s Schengen free-travel zone, envisaging a fluid border with dual control checks for arrivals by air at Gibraltar airport, carried out by Gibraltar and Spanish officials.
Spanish diplomats hope the treaty will strengthen their country’s claim on Gibraltar
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A joint statement issued by the UK, Spain and the EU in June said the new deal “resolves the last major unresolved issue from Brexit”.
The treaty, both Spanish and British diplomats hope, will remove “the stone in the shoe” that has plagued bilateral relations for centuries. Spanish diplomats, however, hope that it will strengthen their country’s legal claim on the Rock in the future, leading the way for Madrid to wield greater influence over the UK territory.
Spanish media reported that the British territory agrees to incorporate the agreed European legislative acts into its domestic law and to align itself with future amendments, as well as to accept the principles and case law of the European Court of Justice.
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The reports noted that the treaty will allow Spain to exercise executive functions over Gibraltar’s infrastructure but that, according to El Confidencial news website, it specifies that nothing signed “shall constitute the basis for any assertion or denial of sovereignty” by the United Kingdom or Spain over the territory.
The treaty gives Spain the power, the reports said, to accept or deny a person entry into the Schengen area regardless of any British decision and “|to carry out arrests and other coercive measures it deems necessary in the interests of its security”.
British and Spanish conservatives may attack the treaty as a historic sell-out of both their country’s sovereignty claims over Gibraltar. “But this treaty is certainly an immeasurable improvement over the non-treaty status quo, which would have effectively converted Gibraltar into an island,” said the source.
In Gibraltar, uncertainty prevails over the effects of removing the border, which for many has been a source of both tax-free or low-tax benefits and of their identity as a symbol of their apartness from Spain.
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The mood at a meeting of business leaders last week “was summed up by the Gibraltar Federation of Small Businesses and the Chamber of Commerce with three words: Frustration. Worry. Anger”, the Gibraltar Chronicle newspaper reported.