Gibraltar chief optimistic EU post-Brexit question to be resolved this year

Gibraltar’s future relationship with the European Union will be decided in the first half of the year, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo assured on Tuesday, adding that this year will be the year in which an agreement could be reached on a post-Brexit solution.

In his New Year’s message, Picardo noted that “2024 is the year in which, at last, it will be determined whether or not an agreement can be reached” with Brussels, which has been pending a solution since the UK left the European Union on 31 December 2020, after Brexit.

Gibraltar, a small territory at the southern tip of the Spanish coast, has been a British colony since 1713, and its sovereignty has been repeatedly claimed by Spain.

But Picardo warned of “aspects of the debate with the EU and Spain that may cause us discomfort” and called for “patience and stoic calm” during the negotiations, saying these “will be our only allies”.

Gibraltar’s chief also urged to be prepared to face any pressure that may arise” at the end of the negotiation period.

Gibraltar ‘on a tightrope’

The chief minister, who opposed Brexit, also pointed out that the process of the UK’s exit from the EU was “one of those cases of undoubted adversity” that forced “us to sit at a table we probably never wanted to be at” and that put Gibraltar “on a tightrope”.

“We would not be sitting in these Treaty negotiations if the UK had not voted to leave the EU”, Picardo stressed, adding that “it is pure fantasy for anyone in Gibraltar to suggest that these negotiations could have been successfully concluded earlier”.

Gibraltar’s leader valued the “close collaboration with the UK” and said that they are moving forward in “this difficult and delicate negotiation towards a successful conclusion”.

In the Brexit referendum in June 2016, 96% of Gibraltar’s electorate voted in favour of remaining in the EU.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)