Negotiators complete work on treaty text, European Commission confirms

Negotiators from the EU, the UK, Gibraltar and Spain have successfully completed work on the legal text of a UK/EU treaty for Gibraltar’s post-Brexit relation with the bloc, the European Commission has confirmed.

Negotiating teams had been locked in discussion for months since the political agreement was announced on June 11.

That work was finished last Friday and the Commission today informed the European Council of the development.

“After almost four years of negotiations, a political agreement on the key elements of the future EU-UK Agreement on Gibraltar was reached on 11 June 2025, between Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares with the UK side [consisting of then] Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Chief Minister Picardo,” a Commission spokesperson for EU/UK relations told the Chronicle.

“This political agreement has been followed since June by intensive work between the negotiating teams to finalise the legal text, which was completed on 12 December 2025.”

“The text is currently undergoing legal review by the EU and the UK before we can proceed with our respective internal procedures leading to the signature and conclusion of the future Agreement.”

“The main objective of the future Agreement is to secure the future prosperity of the whole region.”

“This will be done by removing all physical barriers to the movement of persons and goods between Spain and Gibraltar, while preserving the Schengen area, the EU Single Market and Customs Union.”

“This will bring confidence and legal certainty to the lives and well-being of the people of the whole region by promoting shared prosperity.”

There was no clarity on Wednesday as to how long the legal review would take and when the text would be available publicly, but a legal review of this nature would normally take several weeks.

Once the legal review is complete, the agreement will proceed to ratification. 

Last September, Clara Martínez Alberola, principal adviser at the Commission’s Secretariat-General for Relations with Western European Partners and key player in the negotiation, told the European Parliament the Commission believed this was “an EU only agreement”. 

That means ratification for the EU will be only in the European Parliament and not in the national parliaments of each member state.  

But she added “of course, we need to discuss this with the [European] Council”. 

For the UK, the ratification process will start with a motion in the Gibraltar Parliament calling on the UK to ratify the treaty, after which it will have to be approved in the UK Parliament. 

In the UK system, the treaty will follow the Constitutional Reform Act [CRAG] procedure, which involves the treaty being laid in the Houses of Parliament for 21 sitting days.  

If there are no objections during this time, it is ratified automatically, though there will be opportunity for debate. 

On Tuesday in the House of Commons, UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the Foreign Affairs Committee that negotiating parties hoped to be able to publish the legal text “as swiftly as possible”.

“The political agreement obviously was reached, but I think we're not yet ready to be able to publish the full treaty,” Ms Cooper said.

She said the document would be published and laid in the UK Parliament, adding “there'll be plenty of opportunities to scrutinise the treaty”.

In Gibraltar, the Gibraltar Government said it welcomed the “positive conclusion” of the negotiation on the treaty text.

“The process has now moved to the necessary technical legal scrub/reviews by all parties and the EU translation process,” a spokesperson for No.6 Convent Place told the Chronicle.

“As we work with the UK to bring this part of the process to a swift conclusion, the text is undergoing a rigorous technical and legal review.”

“We remain committed to transparency: the final treaty will be made public and subject to the full scrutiny of the Gibraltar, UK and EU parliaments as part of the process of ratification.”

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