Arias-Vasquez says treaty protects identity, boosting certainty for business and public services 

The Minister for Health and Business, Gemma Arias-Vasquez, told Parliament the treaty would replace years of uncertainty with a structured framework that safeguards sovereignty while ensuring border fluidity. 

Mrs Arias-Vasquez opened by rejecting claims that removing physical checks at the land frontier would weaken Gibraltar’s identity.  

She said identity was rooted in Gibraltar’s culture, history, language and shared community experience, not in “a frontier queue” or border infrastructure, adding that she would not feel “less British and certainly not less Gibraltarian” because of the treaty’s arrangements.  

She said Gibraltar would participate in the Schengen area for the purpose of fluidity of movement, noting that Schengen rules require entry and exit checks to be carried out by a Schengen member state.  

She described this as a legal requirement of the system rather than a political concession, adding that Gibraltar was “confident enough” in its British sovereignty and secure enough in its identity to engage with its neighbour without fear.  

Mrs Arias-Vasquez said the treaty was about certainty for the economy, businesses and workers, and for the next generation.  

She described uncertainty since 2016 as the “single greatest risk” facing Gibraltar and argued that the treaty replaced it with structure, even if imperfect.  

Recalling campaigning for Remain ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum, she said she believed then, as now, that Gibraltar’s prosperity depended on cooperation with its neighbour and fluidity at the border, pointing to the 96% Remain vote as evidence of Gibraltar’s preferred direction.  

She said that, on the morning after the referendum, it felt as if “the door had closed”, but that Gibraltar had always reinvented itself and had done so again through the treaty.  

On sovereignty, Mrs Arias-Vasquez said Article 2 was “unequivocal”, describing the treaty as “cooperation without concession” and “engagement without erosion”.  

She said Gibraltar’s sovereignty remained “exclusively British”, its constitutional status did not change and Gibraltar’s red lines had been defended.  

She warned that, without an agreement, the full Schengen Border Code and the EU’s entry/exit system would apply at the land frontier, bringing systematic checks, biometric registration and long queues.  

She said the human impact would be severe, including on public services such as domiciliary care, noting that a large proportion of carers were cross-frontier workers.  

As Minister for Business, she said the treaty was “economic infrastructure” that protected frontier workers, maintained Gibraltar’s VAT-free status and avoided a hard border, supporting the revenues that fund public services such as healthcare and education.  

She said the Government was engaging with businesses through meetings, town halls, guidance and technical briefings, and pledged work to flesh out transitional support measures and to market Gibraltar internationally as “open for business”.  

She said the “final test” of sovereignty was termination and cited assurances that the UK would only end or suspend the treaty following consultation with Gibraltar and would follow Gibraltar’s wishes and views.  

For those reasons, she said she supported the motion.