Treaty to be signed July 14 in Brussels

The UK/EU treaty on Gibraltar will be signed in Brussels next Tuesday, Chief Minister Fabian Picardo revealed during a Budget address in Parliament on Tuesday.

Ahead of that, Mr Picardo said he would lay in Parliament a concordat between Gibraltar and the UK that he had consulted on with Keith Azopardi, the Leader of the Opposition.

“Last year I addressed the House 18 days after we reached final agreement in Brussels on the treaty between the UK and the EU,” Mr Picardo said.

“Now, this year, I address the House seven days before I head to Brussels with the Deputy Chief Minister to attend to the signature of that same treaty.”

“This year we are living a moment unlike any other in the modern history of this House.”

“Even as I speak, the ink is being prepared for a signature that generations of Gibraltarians longed for and never lived to see.”

The Chief Minister left no doubt that he was satisfied with the content of the concordat, which was a condition of the Gibraltar Parliament’s unanimous support for the treaty.

The concordat is a formal document that will be laid in both the UK and Gibraltar parliaments, stating clearly that Gibraltar will have a trigger to terminate the treaty if need be, and to influence anything arising from it.

Any decision by Gibraltar to terminate the treaty would be put to a referendum.

“I can confirm to this House that, when I lay it, I will be satisfied that the said concordat ensures that, in keeping with the provisions of the Gibraltar Constitution and the principle of consent in the double lock, the relevant UK powers in the agreement can only be exercised in accordance with the wishes and consent of the Government of Gibraltar, and that the people of Gibraltar have the right to determine in referendum whether the agreement should be terminated in future,” Mr Picardo said.

“Those are the terms of the Motion that the House unanimously agreed earlier this year. Incredible, really.”

Mr Picardo said the frontier had for over 300 years been “the defining fault line of Gibraltarian life”.

“It was the line down which a dictator slammed the gates in 1969, dividing families, stranding a generation, and condemning our people to the 16 long years of the final siege of Gibraltar by iron gate and locked padlock,” he said.

“It is also the fence that made us believe it kept us safe just because it kept us captive for that generation defining era.”

“And it is that fence, that scar across our story as a people, which this treaty now begins to dissolve. unlocking, at last, the movement, the fluidity and the prosperity that our geography always offered and that history for so long denied us.”